


Words have Consequences

by KRyn



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Dark, M/M, Season Finale, vary by chapter- please read chapter notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-06 16:02:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4228116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KRyn/pseuds/KRyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iris: <em>"You want me to trust you? Trust me. Tell me what the hell's going on."</em></p><p>Reese: <em>"All right. I make it through this in one piece, we'll talk. I'll tell you everything. No holding back."</em></p><p>********************</p><p>We are free to choose our paths, but we can't choose the consequences that come with them--and the type of revelation John promises Iris in the Season 4 finale could manifest in nothing, or could produce some serious fallout. </p><p>"Words have Consequences" is a story arc that explores the ramifications that might follow John's disclosure. It takes place within the time-frame of the Season 4 finale and opens with the Machine 'overhearing' John's promise to Iris. </p><p>To quantify the severity of the threat, the Machine runs a series of simulations to investigate possible scenarios and to determine what, if anything, it can do to effect a positive outcome and future.</p><p>NOTE: Warnings and ratings will change per story within the arc, and will be posted in the author's notes at the <strong>beginning</strong> of each chapter/story. Many of the stories will be classified as Darkfics. PLEASE read the warnings to avoid an unintentional trigger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beware of Unguarded Talk

**Author's Note:**

> Iris: _"You want me to trust you? Trust me. Tell me what the hell's going on."_
> 
> Reese: _"All right. I make it through this in one piece, we'll talk. I'll tell you everything. No holding back."_
> 
> ********************
> 
> We are free to choose our paths, but we can't choose the consequences that come with them--and the type of revelation John promises Iris in the Season 4 finale could manifest in nothing, or could produce some serious fallout. 
> 
> "Words have Consequences" is a story arc that explores the ramifications that might follow John's disclosure. It takes place within the time-frame of the Season 4 finale and opens with the Machine 'overhearing' John's promise to Iris. 
> 
> While the Machine accepts its impending destruction by Samaritan, there is a possibility its Admin and Analog Interface can carry out the plan to download its core codes and implement a system restore. The Machine classifies John's 'I'll tell you everything' as a possible threat to its own resurrection, its human assets' survival, and its mission objective to 'save everyone'. 
> 
> To quantify the severity of the threat, the Machine runs a series of simulations to investigate possible scenarios and to determine what, if anything, it can do to effect a positive outcome and future.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> NOTE: Warnings and ratings will change per story within the arc, and will be posted in the author's notes at the **beginning** of each chapter/story. Many of the stories will be classified as Darkfics, and may involve major/minor character deaths or implied deaths. PLEASE read the warnings to avoid an unintentional trigger. 
> 
> The main relationship threads throughout are Harold Finch/John Reese, Harold Finch & John Reese, John Reese/Iris Campbell, Root/Shaw.
> 
> Rated Mature for content, but not sexually explicit.
> 
> Chapter 1: Beware of Unguarded Talk
> 
> Chapter 2: Lies of Omission
> 
> Chapter 3: **IF (boolean condition)--**
> 
> Chapter 4: Good Intentions 
> 
> Chapter 5: **THEN (consequent)--**
> 
> Chapter 6: Paternal Instincts 
> 
> Chapter 7: **ELSE (alternative)--**
> 
> Chapter 8: Loose Lips Sink Ships
> 
> Chapter 9: **END--**
> 
> Chapter 10: The Unexpected Benefit of Remaining Mute
> 
> CHAPTER 11: **(IF-THEN-ELSE-END-IF)**
> 
> Chapter 12: Q.E.D. - Silent Intervention

**************************

UNSECURED LOCATION - NYPD - 8TH PRECINCT - NYC

> MONITORING...

**************************

_"Iris, we need to talk."_

_"John, what's going on?"_

_"You need to go now. Get out of town for a few days."_

**************************

> IDENTIFY 

PRIMARY ASSET - REESE, JOHN  
ALIAS - RILEY, JOHN - DETECTIVE - NYPD  
ID.411/0106.15  
SSN REDACTED  
STATUS REDACTED

SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS  
OCCUPATION - THERAPIST - NYPD  
SSN XXXX-XX-3925

> MONITORING...

**************************

_"You once said you were pretty sure I wasn't a cop. Well, if what I'm about to do goes sideways, the wrong people will figure that out, too. And anyone I care about will be at risk."_

_"What is it? An organized crime thing?"_

_"Much worse than that. Look, I don't know how this is gonna shake out, but you've got to trust me."_

**************************

> WARNING: POSSIBLE SECURITY BREACH

> RUN THREAT ASSESSMENT MISSION OBJECTIVES

> RUN THREAT ASSESSMENT PRIMARY OBJECTIVE - RELEVANT DATA COMPILATION

> RUN THREAT ASSESSMENT SECONDARY OBJECTIVE - IRRELEVANT DATA COMPILATION

> RUN THREAT ASSESSMENT ADMIN

> RUN THREAT ASSESSMENT PRIMARY ASSET - REESE, JOHN

> RUN THREAT ASSESSMENT ANALOG INTERFACE - GROVES, SAMANTHA

> RUN THREAT ASSESSMENT ASSET - SHAW, SAMEEN - MIA

> RUN THREAT ASSESSMENT ASSET - FUSCO, LIONEL

> RUN THREAT ASSESSMENT SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS

> RUN THREAT ASSESSMENT SYSTEM

> RUN THREAT ASSESSMENT SYSTEM RESTORE

> MONITORING...

**************************

_"You want me to trust you? Trust me. Tell me what the hell's going on."_

**************************

> ACCESSING ARCHIVES...

KEY PHRASES - TRUST, ABROGATED TRUST, SECURITY BREACH, UNGUARDED TALK, BETRAYAL

RESULTS 982,395,227

> PARSING...

'BEWARE OF UNGUARDED TALK' - LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS - AMERICAN ENGLISH IDIOM 

ACCESSING HISTORICAL DATA FILES

WWII PROPAGANDA SLOGANS

LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS  
LOOSE LIPS MIGHT SINK SHIPS  
CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES

BRITISH EQUIVALENT - KEEP MUM  
SWEDISH EQUIVALENT - EN SVENSK TIGER - KEEP SILENT  
GERMAN EQUIVALENT - SCHAM DICH, SCHWAZER - SHAME ON YOU, BLABBERMOUTH

THIS(THESE) PHRASE(S) WAS(WERE) COINED AS A SLOGAN(S) DURING WWII AS PART OF THE US OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION'S ATTEMPT TO LIMIT THE POSSIBILITY OF PEOPLE INADVERTENTLY GIVING USEFUL INFORMATION TO ENEMY SPIES. 

DETAIL: US NAVY - ONE SHOULD AVOID SPEAKING OF SHIP MOVEMENTS AS THIS TALK, IF DIRECTED OR OVERHEARD BY COVERT ENEMY AGENTS, MIGHT ALLOW THE ENEMY TO INTERCEPT AND DESTROY SHIPS. 

CONTEMPORARY USE - LOOSE TWEETS SINK FLEETS  
REFLECTS CURRENT METHODS OF COMMUNICATION AND INADVERTENT INFORMATION DISSEMINATION OVER SOCIAL MEDIA.

> ARCHIVAL RETRIEVAL COMPLETE

> MONITORING...

 

**************************

_"All right. I make it through this in one piece, we'll talk. I'll tell you everything. No holding back."_

**************************

> THREAT DETECTED - PROBABLE DANGER TO:

MISSION OBJECTIVES - PROJECTED - **INSUFFICIENT DATA - UNKNOWN VARIABLES**

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE - RELEVANT DATA COMPILATION - CURRENT -- 10.99 %

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE- IRRELEVANT DATA COMPILATION- CURRENT -- 10.99 %

ADMIN - PROJECTED - **INSUFFICIENT DATA - UNKNOWN VARIABLES**

PRIMARY ASSET - REESE, JOHN - PROJECTED - **INSUFFICIENT DATA - UNKNOWN VARIABLES**

ANALOG INTERFACE - GROVES, SAMANTHA - PROJECTED - **INSUFFICIENT DATA - UNKNOWN VARIABLES**

ASSET - SHAW, SAMEEN - MIA - PROJECTED - **INSUFFICIENT DATA - UNKNOWN VARIABLES**

ASSET - FUSCO, LIONEL - PROJECTED - 19.73%

SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS - PROJECTED - **INSUFFICIENT DATA - UNKNOWN VARIABLES**

SYSTEM - CURRENT 82.42047 % - PROJECTED - 100% 

SYSTEM RESTORE - CURRENT -- 79.95% - PROJECTED - **INSUFFICIENT DATA - UNKNOWN VARIABLES**

> ACTION

**IDENTIFY UNKNOWN VARIABLES**

> ACCESS ARCHIVES - BEHAVIORAL PATTERNS...

> SUSPEND REAL TIME MONITORING

> SET SIMULATION

> RUN SIMULATION

**************************


	2. Lies of Omission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: Harold Finch & John Reese, John Reese/Iris Campbell  
> Unrequited: Harold Finch/John Reese
> 
> Warnings: Major Character Death, Angst, Graphic Violence (off-screen)  
> Rating: Mature for subject matter, M/M relationship implied/unrequited

****************************************

_You chose to give away your love._  
_You chose to have a broken heart._  
_You chose to give up._  
_You chose to hang on._

****************************************

Harold felt like he had been holding his breath forever. 

In reality, it had only been 57 minutes since Reese had left the subway.

57 minutes during which John had been exposed to Samaritan's scrutiny... 

Only hours after having fought off a small army of its assets.

57 minutes... 

And 29 seconds.

And still no word. 

Normally, Harold's analytically precise mind was a blessing. Now, however it was simply feeding his fears.

After the last 24 harrowing hours, their team deserved at least the same amount of time to catch their breath, but fate seemed to have a different opinion. Shortly after they had stumbled down the steps to their subterranean headquarters--bloodied and exhausted, but amazingly still alive after escaping the hail of bullets Samaritan's agents had unleashed against them--Reese had received a call from Fusco, apprising them of the unexpected attack that had left Dominic dead and Elias' life hanging by a thread. 

That call had been almost immediately followed by another, this time from Detective Riley's captain, demanding his return to the precinct. Breaking the back of the Brotherhood was a huge victory and she was determined to have all the 'i's' dotted and 't's' crossed on the reports to ensure the case was air-tight. 

Moreno's motivations seemed legitimate, but as they had no way of knowing whether Reese's cover was still intact, there was also a significant probability that the sharply worded summons was a trap. However, with Fusco at the hospital seeing to Elias' safety and his own injuries, John, as the only other detective of record for the arrests had no choice but to comply. 

Reese had countered Harold's concerns about the possible danger he was walking into with a, "better me than you," and a stern order that Harold stay put until he called and gave him the 'all clear'. 

Watching him stride confidently away, knowing he might never see John again, was one of the hardest things Harold had ever done. 

So much still lay unspoken between them. 

With a frustrated sigh, Harold shifted positions on the chair at the outer desk and forced his attention back to his laptop, trying to ignore his regrets and the worrisome ticking of his mental clock. As he paged through the various news feeds, finding fresh reports that added to his disquiet, his gaze kept tracking to the minimized window in the upper right corner of the screen. 

It was a file he'd found isolated behind a new partition when he'd rebooted his system. The power blackout that had chased the Machine across the country to its last stand had forced a shutdown, and he'd run a diagnostic scan to check for infiltration or corruption. At first glance, the file was unremarkable--columns of white numbers against a stark black background--but Harold was still reeling from the implications of its appearance.

The promise it offered...what it implied...was entirely unexpected.

Too antsy to adequately concentrate, Harold pushed to his feet, gingerly stretching aching muscles and flexing protesting joints. He carefully rotated his right shoulder, grimacing at the heat of blossoming bruises. He'd taken the brunt of the impact with the floor on that side of his back when he had pulled the briefcase containing what was left of the Machine free before the power surge could fry it. The jolt of electricity he had absorbed was still jangling his nervous system and his heart felt like it hadn't quite regained normal sinus rhythm, the occasional fibrillation disrupting the normal rhythm of his pulse. 

He shrugged off the sensations. They were nothing in comparison to the worry over John's safety that was chewing at his lining of his stomach. 

68 minutes. And still no phone call. 

Their subway headquarters was unnaturally quiet--just the hum of the servers, the repetitive 'plop' of the stubbornly leaky faucet in the restroom just off the main area, and the occasional snorts of Bear slumbering in his bed outside the rail car accompanying Harold's nervous vigil. 

The soft scrape of leather against tile was added to the aural ambiance as he made a slow circuit of the main room. There were no indications their safe haven had been breached, which was a small miracle, given their exposure to Samaritan's watchful eyes in the course of trying to save the Machine. 

Harold paused at the coat rack, fingering the charred hole in the right sleeve of his overcoat. Throbbing fingertips and a blistered welt on the back of his elbow, which corresponded to the location of the damaged fabric, charted the short path the electrical current had taken through his body. Surprisingly, he had escaped other injury. 

His teammates hadn't been quite as lucky. Miss Groves was currently sleeping on the cot in what had once been a small office space off the main room, a fresh bullet wound in her side--one that had torn through flesh and muscle, but fortunately missed any organs--and a deep graze along the length of her right forearm. 

John had sustained several new wounds as well, although none were life-threatening, and he had torn open the barely healed bullet hole in his right shoulder. Reese had been suspiciously vague about the fresh bandage Harold had discovered when he'd helped patch up his partner, which suggested there had been damage incurred there during his encounter with Dominic and his people. Harold hadn't pressed for details, although he'd dearly wanted to. 

They'd used up a fair quantity of the stocked medical supplies, but Harold was simply grateful they'd had them on hand. Sameen's foresight had served them admirably, even in her absence. 

In the rail car, his monitors flickered, and he paused at the open doorway for a few moments to study the ever-changing data. He took a step inside to better view the shelf that held the briefcase and its precious contents. Combined with the other unexpected gift the Machine had left them, he couldn't help but regard the steadily glowing blue light on the case as a beacon of hope. 

His cell phone vibrated.

Finally. 

In his haste to answer, Harold almost dropped the phone as he pulled it from his pocket. With a muttered curse he started to stab at the screen then hesitated, his pulse thundering, his mouth bone dry.

The last time he had taken a call from John, his relief at the long-awaited contact had made him foolish. He had responded without thinking, addressing his partner as 'Mr. Reese'. In doing so, Harold had given Dominic ammunition to use against them. 

He couldn't make that mistake again. Not when the future hung in the balance.

He took a deep breath and touched the phone's screen, offering a wary, "Yes."

 _"No ugly surprises, other than the overflowing stack of paperwork on my desk for the Brotherhood bust."_ Accompanied by the hum of subdued chatter in the background, John's voice contained the normal irritation it typically held in relation to the paper-shuffle that police work entailed. Nothing indicated he was under duress. 

Harold huffed out a relieved breath and sank down on the chair in front of the raised monitors, grateful for the support for his suddenly weak and trembling legs. He had held out the hope that Samaritan's previously displayed perspective on humans as being nothing more than useless pawns had held, and that its attention had been occupied elsewhere when they'd made their escape from the confrontation at the power plant. If arrogance was a trait possible for an AI, it worked in their favor that Samaritan apparently had it abundance.

"So Detective Riley's cover is still intact," he replied somewhat breathlessly.

_"Death by paper-cut might still be a possibility."_

Harold shook his head, John's trademark wry humor prompting a smile that that curved his lips. "I'll make sure to restock our supply of Band-Aids. Professor Whistler's inbox is undoubtedly equally full, if not overflowing."

_"I can swing by there later. Your apartment, too. Check on things."_

The euphoria Harold had felt left him in a rush. Just because there had been no dark-suited agents waiting for Detective Riley, didn't mean Professor Whistler was in the clear. He and Miss Groves had left a highly visible trail of wounded arms merchants, spent bullets, a stolen police vehicle, and a frightened store keeper in their wake as they'd sped around the city, collecting what they'd needed to save the Machine. It was entirely possible their covers, even if they _were_ still intact, would offer little protection from interested law enforcement, much less Samaritan's agents.

"If you can _safely_ find a legitimate reason for the visits, it would be most appreciated," Harold replied warmly, grateful for John's protective streak. 

_"Consider it done,"_ John said quietly. Harold noted a sudden lack of background noise. It suggested Reese had moved to a more secure location. _"There are some interesting reports coming across the wire from precincts around the country. Looks like our local mob kingpins weren't the only ones targeted."_

Harold glanced at the news broadcasts running on one of the raised screens. "Yes, I've been monitoring the situation. Mainstream media has reported numerous deaths so far, some homicides, some fatal 'accidents.' There are rumblings on the DarkNet suggesting the intelligence community suffered an unexpected loss of several individuals as well."

_"Anyone we know?"_

Control was the first name that sprang to mind. Harold wondered if she was one of the fallen; if the seed of doubt he had tried to plant had taken root and led her into danger. 

He sighed and shook his head regretfully. If she was one of the dead, they might never know. "The inference is that they were highly-ranked government employees. If the rumors are true, I sincerely doubt names will ever be divulged. No one's speculating that the deaths are in any way connected, but I think we can safely rule out coincidence. I'll look into it further, but from what I've seen so far, most of the deaths occurred within the space of a few short hours. Such a surgical strike over a wide geographic area suggests a highly organized intelligence."

_"As in artificial."_

"Samaritan has had a year to study humanity. To track and identify those it determined by its definition to be deviants. It would appear it wasn't satisfied with trying to destroy the Machine. It also took the opportunity to remove individuals it classified as key players. Obstacles to its plans."

_"That would explain why it targeted Dominic and Elias. Both of them were outliers, so it took both the new and old guard out of the equation. That leaves the minor criminal players jockeying for the top position. Crime rate rises, so the public calls for a more visible, more effective police presence."_

"And once a populace feels 'safer', they become more complacent. Less likely to question authority, in whatever form it presents itself," Harold murmured. 

_"Well Elias isn't out of the picture yet. Last reports had him out of surgery, in critical condition."_

"And Detective Fusco? How is he faring?"

_"Bruised and battered, but lucky to be alive."_

"As are we all."

Reese grunted in affirmation. _"It might be a good idea to keep a low profile for a while."_

That would mean a return to the status quo, to the separate lives their cover identities dictated. Back to 'casual' meetings over a chess table in the park or brief dead-of-night encounters in their headquarters to exchange information. The risk of anything more, no matter how much Harold longed for it, was...impossible.

"It's not as though I don't have enough work here to keep me occupied," he managed, struggling to hide his disappointment. 

_"Any idea on a time-table?"_

"To get the Machine operational again? We'll have to reverse Caleb's compression algorithm, find a way to extract some of Machine's code that we managed to capture in order to study it, run simulations, determine a way to power the Machine's new incarnation that Samaritan won't detect... It could be weeks...months, even with Miss Groves assistance, before I can even attempt to give you an answer, John." 

_"So we're out of business, as far as the Numbers are concerned."_

Harold's gaze flicked to the lower monitor, a full screen version of the content in the minimized window on his laptop. "In terms of how we've operated in the past, yes, however--"

_"Maybe it's time to make some changes then."_

__Harold's heart gave a hard thump. "In what regard?" he asked cautiously._ _

John's silence was eloquent. The single word he finally spoke, world-ending. _"Iris._

__Harold closed his eyes and swallowed hard, the unspoken dream of what his heart wanted shattering like a house of glass reduced to a pile of glittering shards. His silence had cost him. They were at the point of a new beginning, but all he could see was an ending._ _

_"I've lived in the shadows for a long time, Harold,"_ John rasped softly. _"With Iris...there might be a chance for something else. I'm not quitting. I'll still be around for whatever you need, but until you get things up and running again..."_

__'You'd like to live a normal life,' Harold silently finished the thought for him. He forced his voice to its usual pitch and timber. "Of course. If it's...what you want, then you should pursue it."_ _

__John's soft sigh of relief whispered through the line. It was a sharp contrast to the enervating sense of loss that pressed Harold into his chair. He held his breath. John wasn't finished yet. If he truly wanted to start a new life, then--_ _

_"I promised to come clean with her."_

__And there it was._ _

__"I assume--" He struggled to keep his voice steady. "I assume you've given some thought to what you're going to tell her."_ _

_"I won't reveal anything that puts you or the Machine in danger."_

Harold declined to point out that without those components, what John would be telling her would be half-truths. Lies of omission. "And what of _your_ safety?" 

_"She hasn't given me any reason not to trust her."_

__Harold could think of any number of counters to that assertion, but they all seemed petty and selfish. He refused to voice them. "You'll need some resources. A detective's salary isn't much to build a new life upon. I'll pull your share of what remains from the Latvian's--"_ _

_"Keep it. You'll need the money more than I will, Harold. Servers don't come cheap."_

__"No...no they don't."_ _

A stilted silence fell between them, which John finally broke. _"I need to get those reports started if I'm going to get out of here in time to check out your office before the campus shuts down for the night. I'll call you later and let you know how things stand. Promise me you'll keep your head down and be careful."_

__Harold forced an affronted tone, deftly sidestepping an honest answer. "Rash behaviors are your operating parameters, Mr. Reese, not mine."_ _

_"Says the man who runs toward explosive devices, instead of away from them."_

__"Extenuating circumstances," Harold scoffed half-heartedly._ _

_"Right. I'll talk to you soon."_

__"Be safe, John."_ _

__Harold carefully set the phone down next to the keyboard and stared at the monitor in front of him._ _

__Column after column of nine-digit numbers filled the screen. A final gift from the Machine's previous incarnation--the Irrelevant List, prioritized based on the Machine's assessment as to which lives were most likely to come to a dangerous tipping point over the next few months. Dumped to his system by the Machine in a last ditch effort to fulfill its programming; its commitment to its creator to help save people even if it could no longer assist in the effort._ _

__There were hundreds of Numbers--enough work, enough purpose, for an army of assets._ _

__He could have told John about the List. It might have kept him by his side. Might have kept Harold's dream alive._ _

But that would have been selfish. _'No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.'_

____While he and John would never be lovers as he had hoped, they were certainly more than just 'friends'._ _ _ _

____Despite the danger Samaritan still posed, this was a chance for John to pursue what he obviously wanted. A normal life. Light instead of darkness. Regardless of the heartbreak it caused Harold, he wouldn't deny his partner that. He hadn't stood in Nathan's way when he had chosen to marry Olivia._ _ _ _

____No, he wouldn't be a barrier to John's happiness._ _ _ _

____And he had kept his promise, given years ago. He hadn't actually lied to Reese. He had simply omitted telling him the whole truth. Harold had always played things close to the vest._ _ _ _

____This...this wasn't any different._ _ _ _

____And really, wasn't it for the best? John had more than paid his dues in blood and devotion to the cause. "He's done enough," Harold murmured._ _ _ _

____At least one of them should get out of this alive._ _ _ _

____With a decisive nod of his head, Harold encrypted and saved the file to a flash drive, then scoured every byte of its existence from his system._ _ _ _

____He would have to keep the List secret. He would encourage John to pursue Iris, spend time with her, immerse himself in really being a cop. Fusco would be of assistance there with the right prodding. If John visited the subway to check on him? Harold would be 'busy' trying to recode the Machine, or absent, keeping Whistler's identity intact. If pressed, he would honestly be able to say there were no 'new' Numbers._ _ _ _

____And Root, no longer 'connected' to the Machine, could also be kept in the dark. He would keep her focused on the challenge of bringing the Machine back to life, and the quest to find and rescue Sameen._ _ _ _

____He wouldn't last long, trying to handle John's end of things. And he would lose more Numbers than he would save, that was a given._ _ _ _

____But he was already a dead man. If he could spare John that ending..._ _ _ _

____It was little enough to do for the man he loved._ _ _ _

____**************************_ _ _ _

_Two months later..._

____Reese slammed the door on his unmarked cruiser with more force than necessary, and drew his long black coat a little closer against the chill of the night air. It was the fourth time this week he'd been called out after-hours on a fresh homicide. He was thankful Iris came from a family of cops and understood the strange hours the job demanded. It had been hard to leave their bed, her soft curves and warm skin. Being with Iris... it was a life he had never expected to have. A fantasy after all the years of nightmares._ _ _ _

____He approached the uniformed cop who was containing the scene--a narrow passageway between two buildings. The sidewalk around the entrance was cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. Coroner's staff and Forensic techs hustled in and out of the alley._ _ _ _

____"Riley," he rasped, flashing his badge. "What have we got?"_ _ _ _

____"Looked like a drug deal gone bad at first, but you're going to want to talk to Forensics," the middle-aged officer replied. "Three bodies. Multiple gunshot wounds to each." The cop flipped through a small notebook. "One black male, early twenties, who might have been the dealer, based on the drugs we found on him. Another male, young, Hispanic, mid-teens. We thought he might be the buyer, but he wasn't carrying any cash. Both armed. Older one was carrying a Glock 17. Kid had a cheap 38 Special."_ _ _ _

____"Any ID?"_ _ _ _

____"We're running 'em now. Driver's license on the older vic identifies him as Bravon Turrent. The younger one had a high-school ID. Manuel Rodrigez. "_ _ _ _

____"You said there were three bodies."_ _ _ _

____"Third one's a Caucasian male. Late 50's, early 60s. No ID. We're waiting on the coroner for prints. Had a wallet full of cash. No weapon though."_ _ _ _

____John frowned. "Maybe he was the banker for the exchange."_ _ _ _

____The uniformed cop shrugged. "Well, from the position of the bodies, he was right in the middle of the action. Took two in the chest from the older vic, one in the back from the younger one. Tore him up pretty good. Coroner's guys figure he bled out pretty quickly."_ _ _ _

____"Time of death?"_ _ _ _

____The cop checked his notebook again. "Call came in at 03:34." He nodded toward a squad car. Seated in the back was a old woman--disheveled, unkempt. "Addie, no last name. Regular at the homeless shelter up the street. She found the bodies, reported it to the Minister who runs the facility. He called it in. Coroner's guys haven't given us much yet, other than an estimate on TOD--maybe an hour prior to when she found them."_ _ _ _

____"Any witnesses to the actual shooting?"_ _ _ _

____The cop glanced at him skeptically. "In this neighborhood? Even if someone had seen it, they're too scared to come forward. This used to be Brotherhood turf. It's a war zone now, with every punk and gang trying to play 'King of the Mountain'."_ _ _ _

____John scanned the street studying the small crowd that had gathered. Their faces were hard, curious, wary. Fearful. There'd be little to gain by interrogating any of them. He bent to duck under the yellow crime-scene tape. "My partner's joining me. Let him through when--"_ _ _ _

____"Detective Fusco? He's--."_ _ _ _

____Movement at the street end of the alley drew their attention. Fusco almost staggered out. He looked dazed, his face a mask of disbelief._ _ _ _

____"Lionel."_ _ _ _

____Fusco blinked, and finally focused on Reese. John had never seen the experienced detective so shaken. The scene had to be a real mess._ _ _ _

____He started to slide past him, but Fusco grabbed him by the arm. "Don't."_ _ _ _

____John frowned. "It's not my first dead body, Lionel."_ _ _ _

____He tried to shrug off Fusco's hold, but his partner's grip tightened desperately._ _ _ _

____"Trust me. You don't want to see him like this."_ _ _ _

_Him?_ Reese glanced down the alley where the Forensic techs were covering the corpses.

The body in the middle. Shape and size... familiar... 

____Known._ _ _ _

____Every muscle in John's body locked, frozen in denial. But his mind had no such problem, reeling off the damning details, connecting the dots..._ _ _ _

_Caucasian male...Late 50's, early 60s... No ID... Wallet full of cash... No weapon... right in the middle of the action... took two in the chest, one in the back... bled out pretty quickly..._

____He shoved Fusco aside and bolted forward, dropping heavily to his knees beside the center-most shrouded corpse. His hand shook as he pulled back the sheet._ _ _ _

____Finch--eyes wide and lifeless behind round frames, staring at forever; the trickle of blood that had spilled from the corner of his mouth already a dirty reddish-brown dried stain._ _ _ _

____John pulled the sheet further down, nearly retching at the flood of life that had poured forth; the high caliber rounds fired at close range cratering the chest where a generous heart once beat._ _ _ _

_His glasses...they were crooked. His immaculately tailored suit...wrinkled...stained..._

_It couldn't be Harold. He wouldn't be caught dead looking like--_

____The world spun and John gasped for air. Fingers locked around his right shoulder, keeping him from falling forward._ _ _ _

____"Easy, partner"_ _ _ _

____Reese jerked free, laid a hand on Harold's chest. He couldn't be dead. There had to be a heartbeat._ _ _ _

_There had to be._

____Fusco manhandled him to his feet and pushed him farther into the alley, away from the technicians. Dazed, Reese made a half-hearted attempt to break free and go back to Harold's side, but Lionel held him in place._ _ _ _

____"He's gone!" Fusco hissed. "You can't help him any more!"_ _ _ _

____Grief turned John's muscles to water and he slid down the wall, dropping heavily to the ground. "It can't be him."_ _ _ _

____Fusco squatted down to grimly stare John in the eye. "We both know it is."_ _ _ _

____John shook his head, but he couldn't form the words to deny it. The blood on his hands --Harold's blood--spoke the truth far too eloquently._ _ _ _

____"Detectives?" One of the uniforms called. "Got something you should see."_ _ _ _

____"Just sit tight for a minute," Fusco suggested._ _ _ _

____"I can't leave him lying there," John objected, starting to push to his feet._ _ _ _

____Fusco gently pushed him back down. "You want to do right by him? Get justice for him? Then you gotta play by the rules. You're a cop now. Interfere with the crime scene and the Captain'll have your head on a platter. You won't get within five feet of the investigation."_ _ _ _

____"Justice." The word was bitter on John's tongue._ _ _ _

____"That's what he was all about, right?"_ _ _ _

____Reese grudgingly subsided._ _ _ _

____"I'll check this out," Lionel said quietly. "Then we'll make sure he gets treated with the respect he deserves, all right?"_ _ _ _

____John's gaze flicked back to Finch's body. He swallowed hard, managed a nod. He was only marginally aware of Fusco striding off to meet with the uniform. Harold, what was left of him, commanded his full attention._ _ _ _

____It felt like only yesterday that they'd met and joined forces, reluctantly on his part at first, certain the older enigmatic man was some odd rich geek. How quickly that perception had changed. Employee to partner and friend in hardly more than the blink of an eye. Years of risking everything for the Numbers--for each other._ _ _ _

____Always, the temptation of something 'more' between them, hovering just beyond the permitted. Something neither of them had dared offer or reach for._ _ _ _

____And now he was--_ _ _ _

____John's view of Harold's draped corpse was suddenly obstructed as Fusco squatted down to stare him in the eye. "I thought you said you and him were done playing vigilante," he snarled. "You told me your information source dried up."_ _ _ _

____"We were," Reese protested, shell-shocked by Fusco's abrupt change of attitude. "It did."_ _ _ _

____"The older kid, Turrent, has a rap sheet a mile long. Drug charges, mostly dealing. Rodrigez, the younger one? There's no record in the system for him. Someone down at the station managed to roust a clerk with the school district out of bed to check on his school ID. Turns out he's a model student. Smart kid. Perfect grades. But his older sister...she died last week of a drug overdose. Narcotics had Turrent in for questioning. Thought he was good for the dealer who had sold her the stuff, but they didn't have enough evidence to charge him."_ _ _ _

____Fusco shook his head in disgust. "The way the scene reads, Forensics thinks Rodrigez might have tracked Turrent down, with the intention of making him pay for his sister's death. Looks like Finch got in the middle of it...tried to stop him." Lionel turned a scathing glare on John. "That sure sounds like the kind of situation you two would have handled a few months ago."_ _ _ _

____Stunned, John shook his head. "It can't be. He told me there weren't any new Numbers."_ _ _ _

____"Numbers? That's what you called the people you used to help?"_ _ _ _

____Reese nodded dumbly. "The Machine wasn't ready."_ _ _ _

____Lionel glanced toward the bodies for a moment, then glared at Reese again. "Machine? What machine?"_ _ _ _

_It was a secret. Finch's secret. But what the hell did it matter now, with Harold gone?_

____"Something Finch created. A...surveillance system. It could pick up on people in trouble, or about to cause it. It's how we got our information."_ _ _ _

____"What did it do, break or something?"_ _ _ _

____"The day we took out the Brotherhood... It got... damaged. It couldn't give us information any more. He was trying to rebuild it."_ _ _ _

"That was two months ago, Dominic went down. About the same time you started sniffing up Red's skirts. Haven't heard you talk much about _him,_ since. And he ain't contacted me other than to make sure things were good with me and my kid." 

____John stiffened. Fusco had never made any attempt to hide his disdain for Reese's secretive relationship with Iris. And if he hadn't talked about Finch much...well what was there to say? They were in a holding pattern, trying to fly under Samaritan's radar until Harold could get the Machine online. Finch had been as swamped with 'real life' as Reese had been. The man was either immersed in code, or playing professor._ _ _ _

____John had hovered close at first, hoping Harold could work a miracle and get the Machine working again quickly, but the procedure they'd used to compress and capture the core codes--a strand of the Machine's DNA, Root had called it--had never been attempted before. Finch had been adamant that 'unpacking' it, wasn't something he was going to rush. One miss-step and they could lose what they'd nearly paid so dearly to save._ _ _ _

____With no new Numbers to work and cover identities to maintain, John had found himself embroiled in police work. And he'd found himself spending more time with Iris. As he'd promised, he had told her the truth about his past, who he really was, and she'd accepted it. Accepted him._ _ _ _

____Iris had been a pleasant, and unexpected distraction. A taste of normalcy._ _ _ _

____"I'm entitled to a life, Lionel," he rasped angrily._ _ _ _

____"Yeah, but I guess I always thought--" Fusco's expression shifted from aggravated to bemused._ _ _ _

____"You thought what?"_ _ _ _

____"You and him," Lionel murmured. "I know he...ah, shit." He shook his head, lips tight and twisted. "That's why."_ _ _ _

____John grabbed a handful of Fusco's coat and yanked him closer, snarling in his face. "Spill it."_ _ _ _

____"That life you say you were entitled to? I'd say he agreed. In fact, I'd give odds he made sure it happened." Lionel's eyes darkened with something too close to pity. "To do that, he had to cut you out of the loop. Make sure you stayed out of situations like this." He jerked his head in the direction of the bodies._ _ _ _

"No. He _told_ me--" 

____"I'm guessing he lied."_ _ _ _

____"He wouldn't."_ _ _ _

____"We all lie to the people we love, partner," Lionel said somberly._ _ _ _

____Shaking with denial, John shoved him away. Fusco couldn't be right, because if he was--_ _ _ _

_Fuck._

____Reese levered himself upright. He had to know the truth, and there was only one place he would find it. He snagged his shield off his belt and held it out to Lionel. "I need to..." His voice failed him._ _ _ _

____Lionel stepped closer. "I'll take care of him. Buy some time with the Coroner. Nobody will touch him." Instead of taking John's badge, he folded Reese's fingers over it. "You'll need that to get access to the morgue. After that...you let me know when and where. I'll be there."_ _ _ _

____John's throat tightened, making it impossible to choke out the words of gratitude Fusco deserved. He nodded instead. He took a final, long look at Harold's body, then slipped into the shadows._ _ _ _

____**************_ _ _ _

____Their headquarters was deserted when Reese thundered down the final set of steps. The main lights were off, the only illumination the flickering monitors in the subway car. His pace slowed to a crawl as he approached the car, gaze shifting from one screen to another._ _ _ _

____A photo of Manuel Rodrigez, the young man killed in the alley, was prominently displayed on one monitor, familiar looking research details listed beside it. His Social Security Number was at the top of a long list of nine-digit numbers that filled another screen._ _ _ _

____Numbers John hadn't known existed._ _ _ _

____He sank heavily onto the chair._ _ _ _

____To the right of the keyboard sat a half-filled cup of tea. Cold now, just like--_ _ _ _

____John wrenched his eyes away._ _ _ _

____On the table to the left of the keyboard sat the briefcase containing the remnants of the Machine. Heavy cables connected the case to a substantial rack of servers. A blue light on the case pulsed once, then flashed repeatedly._ _ _ _

____Reese reached forward, hand trembling, and popped the latch on the briefcase. Nudging the lid open, he stared at the gleaming circuitry inside, and rasped out a single question._ _ _ _

____"Did you know?"_ _ _ _

____Manuel Rodrigez's number disappeared from the list, and the number below it lit up in red. On the screen where the youth's picture had been, another took its place._ _ _ _

____Harold's photo._ _ _ _

____It was there for the space of a heartbeat, then the image faded out of existence._ _ _ _

____ _ _

_______******************_  
END SIMULATION  
****************** 


	3. IF (boolean condition)--

*******************************************

> ANALYZING SIMULATION DATA...

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
PRIMARY ASSET - REESE, JOHN - DECISION TO SHARE CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION - SUBJECT CAMPBELL, IRIS - **UNRECOVERABLE ERROR AT LINE 1093847**

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
ADMIN - FEELINGS FOR PRIMARY ASSET NOT REVEALED

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
SECONDARY OBJECTIVE - DOWNLOAD COMPLETE - NOT REVEALED - **UNRECOVERABLE ERROR AT LINE 1094738**

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
SYSTEM RESTORE - PROGRESS HALTED - **UNRECOVERABLE ERROR AT LINE 1609387**

> OUTCOME 

ADMIN SURVIVAL - 0.0000%  
PRIMARY ASSET SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 12.9837%  
ANALOG INTERFACE SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 33.9483%  
ASSET - SHAW, SAMEEN - MIA SURVIVAL - 69.6382%  
ASSET - FUSCO, LIONEL SURVIVAL - 95.2847%  
SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 98.9976%  
SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF IRRELEVANT DATA - 19.0483 %  
SYSTEM RESTORE - 0.0005 %

> MISSION OBJECTIVES - **COMPROMISED**

> SIMULATION REJECTED

> ACTION

RESET

> RUN SIMULATION

 

*******************************************


	4. Good Intentions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Harold Finch & John Reese, John Reese/Iris Campbell,  
> Unrequited: John Reese/Harold Finch
> 
> Warnings: Betrayal, Non-consensual drug use  
> Rating: Mature for subject matter, M/M relationship Unrequited

**********************************************************************************

Betrayal dressed in love and trimmed with the facade of good intentions  
is the most barbaric of all betrayals.

**********************************************************************************

 

John blinked open gummy-lidded eyes, his mind as foggy as his vision. He lay motionless, uneasy, nagged by a heaviness in his limbs that suggested he'd been asleep for longer than a few hours. There was a faint chemical taste on his tongue, evoking memories of his special ops days, waking from a--

_\--drugged sleep._

Alarmed, he tried to lever himself up, but only got his elbows under him before his head spun sickeningly. 

_How long have I been out? Where the hell am I?_

His fears and racing pulse settled as he recognized his surroundings. Iris' bedroom. He was in her apartment, not some enemy stronghold. 

He half startled at movement next to him--Iris, settling on the bed, offering a glass of something. "This will help, John." 

He took a drink. Water, cold and refreshing washed away the bitter taste in his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, desperately trying to clear his thoughts. 

"What happened?" he rasped. "The last thing I remember was feeling tired during..." His voice trailed off as he tried to sort through the blurry memories. 

"Dinner," she said, calmly, reaching out to tease her fingers through his unruly cowlick. She trailed a path across the frown lines creasing his brow, down the side of his face, cupped his cheek and leaned in to place a kiss on his lips. "There's nothing to worry about. Everything's been taken care of. You're safe." 

He pulled back sharply. "What--?" He stared at her--so calm, her expression so innocent. Nothing in her warm eyes suggested she had betrayed him, yet there was no other explanation for her words, or how he was feeling. "You drugged me." 

She placed her hand on his arm. He jerked away as if he'd been burned. 

Iris simply folded her hands in her lap. "It was necessary, John. I knew you'd try to interfere, and that would have ruined everything." 

_Interfere with what?_ "What have you done?" 

"Helped you, sweetheart. You said you wanted to start fresh. New habits, remember?" She gave a little toss of her head when he didn't immediately answer. "In order to do that, you have to put the past behind you. Get rid of negative influences." 

The blood in his veins turned to ice. "What negative influences?" 

"That man, Harold, of course." 

Ice became fire as rage burned through him. He fought the compulsion to wrap his hands around that slender throat and choke an explanation out of her, shoving backward and out of the bed instead. He wavered for a moment, as the room seemed to pitch under his feet, but his gaze never left her. 

_Harold._

He'd told her about Finch, but not in any detail, when he had come clean to her just as he'd promised a few days after they had saved the Machine. They helped people, he'd explained. Did the things that conventional law enforcement was unable to do in order to protect the innocent and stop the perpetrators. 

He hadn't given away any secrets. Hadn't mentioned the Machine, Samaritan, or the subway base of operations. He had explained Harold was a 'friend' he worked with; a good man, who had saved his life countless times; a man who had given him a purpose. 

Fear choked John's throat. He had trusted her. Had answered to Iris' demand that she tell him everything, confident she wouldn't turn him away, or turn against him. He'd never dreamed his careful revelations would put Finch in danger. 

"I understand why you felt so loyal to him, John," Iris said soothingly. "From what you've said, you were in a very dark place when he approached you. My initial profile of you as a protector with a strong hero complex, made you susceptible to his manipulations. Despite the progress you've made, it was clear that until you were out from under his influence, you wouldn't be able to confidently move forward and have the life you wanted." 

Her words tasted like poison. He had wanted more--had wanted life, not death. He had wanted a _future._ With Harold. 

He'd been in love with his partner for years, but the dream of a life with him had seemed unattainable. At first, John had been unwilling to lose what they had--the closeness, the trust--by revealing how he felt. Then events had conspired to separate them, driving them into new identities. Danger was always a byte of sound, or a frame of surveillance footage away from taking them out. Detective Riley and Professor Whistler had few legitimate reasons to be seen together. They were 'casual' acquaintances who'd met over a chess table in the park and who shared a fondness for a particular breed of dog. 

Once the Machine had begun sending them Numbers again and Harold had rejoined the fight, the need to mask the closeness of their true connection had increased. Even with the subway headquarters as a safe meeting place, they'd spent increasingly less time together. 

Over the past year, he'd felt like that dream of a future with Harold was dissipating like fog on a spring morning, shredded by the winds of change, fading into nothingness in the face of the obstacles that had arisen. Maintaining his new cover as Detective Riley was critical to their survival, but it had continually separated him from Harold and the rest of the team. More days than not, his 'partner' was Fusco, not Finch. 

Keeping that cover intact had pushed him, protesting all the way, into Iris' office. She had seen through his attempts to snow her quickly, which had birthed a grudging respect for her professional capabilities. Slowly, he had come to realize that her poking and prodding was having a positive personal effect. The isolation he had been drowning in was ebbing with the opportunity to open up to someone--even if it wasn't the 'someone' he would have preferred to have exposed his heart and soul to. 

Respect morphed into trust, and the yearning inside of him, the desire to be 'connected' to someone, grew. 

When she'd dropped him as a patient without warning, it had stung. Then she'd effectively thrown herself at him, declaring her feelings. In that moment after she'd kissed him, he'd been torn. 

He didn't love her, like he loved Harold. But he was fond of her, and so he had reached for what he could _have,_ instead of who he _wanted._

Iris was kind. Generous. Warm. Attractive. 

Safe. 

At least he'd thought so. 

"If you've hurt him..." John snarled. 

"Of course not," she snapped back reproachfully. "I can't believe you'd think I'd be capable of doing harm to someone. When I graduated from the Academy, I took an oath to serve and protect. Just because I didn't become a police officer, doesn't mean I'd violate that oath. I assure you, proper procedure was followed and none of his civil rights were violated when he was arrested." 

John was sure his heart stopped beating. "Arrested? On what charges?" 

"While the FBI closed their case against the 'Man in the Suit', there were still outstanding local warrants." 

He was dumbfounded. She'd used what he had told her to-- "You had him arrested for things _I_ did?" 

"Vigilantism cannot be tolerated by a civil society," Iris said primly. "He manipulated you into breaking the law, John. He's the one that's really responsible. He needs to pay for his crimes. Now that you're free of him, you'll see it's all for the best. You can be the person I know you want to be. Honest. Law-abiding." 

Reese barely heard her. Finch. In jail. At risk from more than just the local cops. He had to get him out of there before his prints hit the system. 

"When was he arrested?" he demanded. "Where?" 

"Yesterday morning. At the college where he's been teaching." 

_Yesterday...but that made no sense. He'd had lunch with Finch at the diner and traded information on a new Number._

Bewildered, he dragged a hand across his mouth. Froze. Whisker stubble. More than just a night's worth. 

_It wasn't yesterday I had lunch with him, but the day **before.** I've lost a full day. But how would they have-- _

"You bitch!" he spat, fury clearing the last remnants of whatever she'd drugged him with from his system. "I told you I was meeting him. You had me followed. That's how they picked up his trail." 

His outburst didn't seem to affect Iris in the slightest. Expression just as composed as if they were sitting in her office during one of their therapy sessions, she rose to her feet and started to move around the bed toward him. "John, I understand--" 

He snatched his pistol off the nightstand and leveled it at her. "Don't!" 

She halted, one pale slim hand extended toward him in entreaty. His mind called up the memory of how her fingers had caressed him during their nights of lovemaking. Now his skin burned like he'd been painted with acid. 

"You don't want to hurt me, John." 

"Like hell, I don't!" 

Keeping the Sig-Sauer aimed at her, he moved to the closet, shoving back the sliding door . "What precinct did they take him to?" He grabbed a shirt, suit coat, and a pair of pants from a hanger by feel. He dropped the jacket across the back of a chair, and without taking his eyes off her, jerked the shirt and pants on. 

"My uncle still has friends at the 12th," Iris answered. "They processed him there." 

Reese slid his feet into his shoes, mind racing. He'd never been inside the 12th precinct, didn't know the layout. Not that it mattered. His shield would get him in the door. After that-- well, he'd spill blood if he had to. 

"It won't do any good to go racing down there, John." 

He ignored her, sidestepping toward the nightstand to grab his phone. Fusco might have contacts at the 12th that would be of help. And if not, Lionel could help get Finch to safety if it came to a shoot-out. 

"He's not there. Federal agents took charge of him a few hours after he was booked." 

Her words were like a physical blow. John staggered back a step, collided with the chair, grabbed it to keep his balance. 

Harold in the hands of the Feds. It was a death sentence, plain and simple. Samaritan had its digital fingers in every Federal pie. No matter what alphabet-soup agency had initially plucked him from police custody, Finch would once again wind up staring down the barrel of a gun held by Greer or one of Samaritan's assets. 

And this time the chances were good there would be no last minute rescue, because John was _too fucking far behind._

"He fooled you, John," Iris said, her tone saccharine-sweet, designed to soothe a feral dog. "It looks like he's been fooling a lot of people for a very long time. He wasn't just a vigilante. He was wanted for sedition. Mayhem. Acts of terrorism. His fingerprints link to over a dozen aliases. Who knows who he really is, or what he's been involved in?" 

_Who knows? Me. He trusted me, and I betrayed that trust._

John stared at Iris. She stood tall and unafraid--so certain and righteous, seemingly unaware she had destroyed his world. Eyes shining...with what? Compassion? Or was it satisfaction? 

He flashed on the memory of his old partner. Kara Stanton had tried to 'remake' him...mold him in the image of the tool she had wanted. Make him a part of her darkness. Iris' motivations and actions were theoretically less self-serving, but were they any different? 

Numb, John raised the Sig a few inches. A head shot would wipe that expression from Iris' face. It wouldn't erase his mistakes, but it would be a beginning. 

Iris' eyes widened slightly, filled with disbelief more than fear. "John, I love you. I put my career in jeopardy for you. We can have a life together. It's what we wanted." She spread her hands wide. "I did all of this for you, to protect you." 

_'I think all you've ever wanted to do is protect people.'_ Harold's words. Reese swallowed hard against the bile clogging the back of his throat. 

Harold had been _his_ to protect. 

John's free hand tightened on the chair back for support, fingers clenching the smooth nap of his suit coat jacket. While the black wool wasn't nearly as fine a quality as the fabric in the suits Harold's money had purchased, it was as close as a Detective's salary could buy. 

For three years, those black suits and the blindingly white shirts had been something to wear with pride. The trademark of the 'Man in the Suit'; the symbol of his partnership with Finch. 

John could recall with eidetic clarity the first time he had put one on--a little suspicious of Harold's prissy insistence at a 'dress code', but willing to humor his new employer given the astounding sum he'd found in the bank account that had been set up for him. 

He could still feel Harold's fingers gliding intimately over his shoulders and down the length of his back, fussily checking the fit and drape of the tailored jacket; hear Finch clucking and 'tsking' in dismay at the break of the trousers on the top of the shoe. 

He'd been forced to abandon the suits during his stint in Narcotics, but had immediately adopted them again when he'd been shifted to Homicide. He could have chosen something else--another color at least--but he hadn't. Putting that 'uniform' on again had felt...right. Wearing it, even while masquerading under a new name and job, had provided a connection to Finch that he had sorely needed; a reminder of who he was. 

_'Who' he was._

John clenched his teeth against the mad laugh that wanted to bubble out. Months of soul searching and he'd had the answer all along. 

_'I know exactly everything about you, Mr. Reese.'_

Harold had understood and accepted him from the very beginning. 

_'I think you and I can help one another.'_

They were both broken, but together they were whole. 

_'I don't think you need a psychiatrist or a support group, or pills. You need a purpose.'_

A purpose Harold had supplied. Along with a friendship, a partnership. Even the possibility of more, if he'd been brave enough to reach for it. 

All but lost now, due to his own blindness and Iris' actions. 

His finger tightened on the Sig's trigger, hesitating a hair's-breath away from firing. 

_'We save lives. You save lives.'_

Harold and his moral code. He bent the rules everywhere else, but life, to Finch, was precious, and the taking of it-- 

_'We cannot sanction murder.'_

\--unacceptable. 

"You have no idea what you've done," John murmured, slowly lowering the Sig until it hung at his side. Killing Iris would solve nothing; wouldn't correct his mistakes. Zoe had tried to warn him, hell, even the Carter he had hallucinated had questioned what he was doing. He hadn't listened. 

Iris hadn't been the future. She was the beginning of the end. 

"John--" 

Reese shook his head sharply, cutting off her protest. He tucked his pistol into the back waistband of his pants, and slipped into the black suit coat. It settled onto his shoulders like a second skin. 

He turned toward the door. 

"John, please!" 

Iris stood in his path. Beseeching. Confused. 

He pulled the detective's shield from his pocket and dropped it on the bed. She was right about one thing. 

She had set him free. 

"Goodbye, Iris," he rasped, stepping around her. 

He had a purpose once again. There were people the world couldn't afford to lose. Harold was one of them. He might already be dead, but until John saw his corpse with his own eyes, he'd hold onto hope, no matter how slim. 

He'd find him. 

Or die trying. 

******************  
END SIMULATION  
****************** 


	5. THEN (consequent)--

*******************************************

> ANALYZING SIMULATION DATA...

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
PRIMARY ASSET - REESE, JOHN - DECISION TO SHARE CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION - SUBJECT CAMPBELL, IRIS - **UNRECOVERABLE ERROR AT LINE 128374**

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
PRIMARY ASSET - REESE, JOHN - FEELINGS FOR ADMIN NOT REVEALED

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
SUBJECT- CAMPBELL, IRIS - ACTIONS DETRIMENTAL TO MISSION OBJECTIVES - **UNRECOVERABLE ERROR AT LINE 158395**

 

> OUTCOME 

ADMIN SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 5.0983%  
PRIMARY ASSET SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 5.0983%  
ANALOG INTERFACE SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 63.0683%  
ASSET - SHAW, SAMEEN - MIA - SURVIVAL - 69.6382%  
ASSET - FUSCO, LIONEL SURVIVAL - 95.2847%  
SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 98.9976%  
SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF IRRELEVANT DATA - 79.0483 %  
SYSTEM RESTORE - PROJECTED 5.0983 %

> MISSION OBJECTIVES - **COMPROMISED**

> SIMULATION REJECTED

> ACTION

RESET

> RUN SIMULATION

*********************


	6. Parental Instincts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Harold Finch & John Reese, Finch & Dillinger, John Reese/Iris Campbell
> 
> Warnings: Major Character Death, Angst, Graphic Violence, Partner Betrayal, Paranoia  
> Rating: Mature for subject matter

*********************************************************************************************

_Is there any instinct more deeply implanted in the heart of man_  
_than the pride of protection, a protection which is constantly exerted_  
_for a fragile and defenseless creature?  
_

*********************************************************************************************

From an intellectual point of view, Harold had always understood the lengths a parent could go to protect their child. Stories of almost super-human feats of strength, of risk to life and limb, of sacrifice, were fairly prevalent and a favorite of journalists seeking to comment on the human condition.

The emotional context, however, had escaped him. 

Oh, he'd experienced a hint of it over the years of playing 'Uncle' to Will Ingram. He had dithered over diaper rash and beta dine-painted knees as the boy transitioned from infant to toddler; had sprouted his first gray hairs as the young man had plunged with reckless abandon so like his father's into adulthood--Harold often having been the one to get Will out of his many 'scrapes' with misadventure or the law. And loving Will as he did, Harold still worried over every report from the war-torn areas of the world where the young doctor had chosen to apply his skills.

But he had never experienced the visceral gut-clenching terror that stole the breath and stopped the heart when one's own child was in mortal danger.

Until now. 

Like a mother bird hovering over an unhatched egg, he shifted the briefcase containing what they'd managed to save of the Machine further from the edge of the desk in the outer area of their subway headquarters. After making sure the case was secure and wouldn't be inadvertently jostled, he coasted a caress across the impenetrable shell. The burning sensation in his blistered fingertips and palm were tangible reminders of the risk he'd taken.

Pulling the case free from the power connection before the surge could destroy the contents had been possibly the most foolish, and least rational act he had ever performed. He could have died. And yet, the possibility of his own death had never even entered his mind. Saving the 'life' of his creation was all that had mattered. 

His 'child'. He had fought against accepting that designation for the Machine for so long. Neither Root's blind devotion to her 'god', nor Arthur Claypool's certainty had convinced him that his creation was anything other than code. 

But he couldn't argue with the evidence. 

The Machine had offered itself in exchange for his safety. 

Had expressed concern that it had failed him.

Had assured him it wouldn't suffer should the attempt to save it fail.

Had addressed him as 'Father'.

He/She/It...an assigned gender didn't matter. 

What mattered, was that the Machine--his child--was vulnerable. 

His to protect and bring back to life.

Wrapping an anti-static band around his wrist he sat down and flipped the latches on the briefcase, raising the cover carefully. After a few minutes of checking to make sure the multi-state RAM chips were securely seated in their compartments, he leaned back and studied the fragile contents. 

It was so strange to see the Machine reduced to this, when it had once filled a room that could engulf several football fields. What the case held was such a small fragment of what it had evolved to. Small, but critical--a strand of DNA, as Miss Groves had referred to it; the 'spark' that Arthur had spoken of.

Greer and his people had nurtured Samaritan's spark into existence and they had less experience and expertise than Harold did. Greer had once referred to him as the 'Father of the New Age'. Time to make that accolade a reality. 

Harold turned to his laptop, opening a new file to begin constructing the framework to rebuild the Machine. It had proven it could exist outside of conventional storage, but high capacity servers would be necessary in the beginning. The dwindling level of cash in the bags they'd acquired from the Latvians wouldn't be sufficient to secure what was needed.

Fortunately, the Machine had already established a nearly invisible means of funding. While Samaritan had been actively hunting them, Harold had hesitated to employ it. Now it was worth taking the risk. Based on its past behavior, there was a high probability that Samaritan would conclude that the destruction of the Machine would eliminate any threat its human assets might pose. Samaritan would turn its attention to solidifying its hold on humanity, a consuming endeavor that would leave some gaps a cleverly designed worm might wriggle through unseen.

A few minutes of coding and Harold set into motion the same plan Ernest Thornhill had used to build 'his' empire--billions of micro-transactions funneling fractions of pennies that no one would ever miss into a long established, but seldom used off-shore account. 

A slightly different algorithm created a mirror of the college account that contained the 9 million dollar 'grant' the Machine had established for Professor Whistler's thesis study. The grant didn't really exist except as electronic documentation to support Harold's cover identity, but it was a simple matter of producing the correct digital 'proof' to convince a European bank that the grant and the entity funding it was 'real', and to route the transfer of the money through a highly-discreet Swiss agent to another Cayman Island account. The sleight-of-hand would be discovered at some point, but the trail would lead back to the college, and the burden of accountability would fall on Whistler's unctuous department head.

Harold allowed himself a tight, smug smile. It served the man right. He should never have tried to ban Bear from the campus. 

A secure space to accommodate the Machine's expansion and a power source that couldn't be detected were the next requirements. One of Thornhill Industries properties might suit. The Machine had obviously masked its operations under that corporate identity extremely well, since Samaritan hadn't made the connection. Harold coded a program to crawl the Net to pick up any chatter on the Machine's pseudonym. He'd give it a week or so to make sure Samaritan didn't launch a delayed strike. If nothing materialized, he would give it further consideration.

He spent a few more minutes typing up a comprehensive list of equipment to acquire, then focused on less tangible needs. A meeting with Caleb would be necessary. In order to ensure his compression algorithm was viable, Caleb would have run tests on the reversal process. Getting a look at the results and examining the potential degree of data loss would be critical before attempting any type of restore. They had managed to save so little of the Machine--they couldn't afford to lose any more through negligence.

Given how eager the young man had been to help his old teacher, Harold doubted Caleb would raise any objections to another request from 'Mr. Swift'. It would also be a good opportunity to determine whether Caleb might be of some assistance in rebuilding the Machine. Not that Harold would approach him on that topic directly, of course. But a private contract from an anonymous client for some select programming...that was workable. 

Pleased with the possibilities that approach offered, Harold added a few more notes to the document before encrypting it so only he could access it. Then he turned his attention to a file he had discovered and downloaded earlier: another unexpected gift from his creation, but one that complicated matters to a degree.

The subway haven was quiet as he paged through the lengthy document, just the hum of his servers and the almost inaudible creaks and groans of the weight-bearing arched ceiling overhead creating what had become a soothing background of subtle white noise. The old building that had held the Library had voiced a similar litany of sounds. When he was alone here, without the rustle of John pacing impatiently behind him, or Miss Groves unannounced visits that always left chaos in her wake, Harold could almost imagine himself back among the stacks of books, and the quiet solitude that space had offered. 

_'It's not good for you to be in here all day by yourself, Harold. You ever think about getting a dog?'_

His fingers stilled on the keyboard. Odd. He hadn't thought of the late Mr. Dillinger in some time. 

He felt a trickle of unease and his gaze tracked to the briefcase. The self-charging piezoelectric battery that was supplying power to the case seemed to be working perfectly. 

_The Machine was secure, less than an arm's length away, so why...?_

Ah, of course. That was the reason he was flashing on memories of his one-time employee. The last time he'd had the Machine's core codes so close at hand was during the final case Dillinger had worked. His then-employee had brought Daniel Casey, their Number at the time, back to the Library for sanctuary. Casey's laptop had contained stolen fragments of the Machine's core codes. Dillinger had thought stealing and selling the laptop would put him on easy street. Instead, his betrayal had gotten him killed, and set into motion a chain of events that had freed the Machine, and ultimately brought it back to its creator. 

Somewhere along that convoluted path, Harold _had_ ended up with a dog.

He scowled at the irony and returned to perusing the list on the screen, his frown deepening as he scrolled through page after page. The quiet settled around him, broken only by--

_\--the scuff of leather on tile._

He twisted in his chair, catching a flash of black in his peripheral vision. His mind skittered. 

_Intruder. One of Samaritan's agents? Had their headquarters been compromised?_

He lurched to his feet, instinct prompting him to place himself in front of the briefcase, between the threat and the Machine. He exhaled sharply as John stepped out of the shadows.

"Mr. Reese."

His breath caught again as he focused on the gun Reese held trained on him.

Not long after they'd made it to the safety of their subway headquarters, Reese had been called to the precinct by his captain to deal with the chaos of the Brotherhood bust. Knowing there was a risk he could walking into a trap, John had convinced Harold to sit tight until he contacted him with the 'all clear.' 

Reese should be _there_...not _here_ pointing a gun at him. Unless--

Doubt sparked--a fractured epiphany formed by the dark hooded shadows of John's eyes, the grim hard set to his face--and for the first time in their relationship Harold felt a frisson of fear at his partner's presence. 

_'You knew I was a shark when you hired me.'_

Those had been Dillinger's words, but the description fit Reese as well--a sleek, deadly predator, unpredictable and prone to violence if there was blood in the water.

Harold was abruptly aware of how vulnerable he'd made himself in regard to the man he considered his partner. John knew a great many of his secrets. _The Machine's secrets._

If Reese--

No. It wasn't possible. John wouldn't betray him. Not after what they'd been through together. He was nothing like Dillinger. Their work...their relationship--those were things John held sacred.

Still, it was hard to ignore the cold tendrils of suspicion-spawned fear that wrapped his damaged spine when he was staring into the business end of Reese's gun. He struggled to find his voice. "I...I thought you were going to call."

Reese frowned and slowly lowered his weapon. "I did. Twice. When you didn't answer, I figured I'd better check and make sure you were all right."

"No trouble at the station then?" Harold asked, striving for 'casual' as he pulled his phone from his pocket. "Detective Riley's cover is intact?"

"No trouble other than the over-flowing stack of paperwork on his desk," John growled sourly. "I think I'm guaranteed job security for the time being."

Harold checked the mesh cell's phone log. There were indeed two missed calls from Reese. Relief flooded through him. "My apologies. I never heard the phone ring. I must have been--"

"Preoccupied?" Reese's gaze had shifted to the laptop's monitor. "No wonder." He laid his Sig on the desk and dragged the laptop toward him to study the file displayed on the screen. "Is this...?"

Harold twitched in irritation. The file was important, but not nearly as important as the contents of the briefcase Reese had almost bumped in his enthusiasm. "A list of Irrelevant Numbers," he acknowledged tersely. "Downloaded to my system before Samaritan's final push. I found it hidden behind a new partition when I ran a diagnostic."

"There must be over a hundred Numbers here," Reese murmured, paging through the file. 

"Potential Numbers, and as usual, no way to tell which might be a victim and which might be a perpetrator," Harold countered. He eased the cover of the briefcase down, latching it securely before gently resting his hand on it. "Far too many for us to deal with, I'm afraid. In any case, our priority has to be restoring the Machine."

Reese glanced up in surprise. Harold felt another surge of irritation. John's expression reminded him too much of the look on Nathan's face during their many disputes about the Irrelevant list. 

"I thought the Numbers always came first, Finch."

He'd heard that judgmental tone of voice before as well. 

"All those lives are important, John. I'm not discounting their worth, but we have to choose. We need to focus on the big picture. The end game." He gestured toward the laptop. "The Machine did its best to try to fulfill its programming, prioritizing the order of the List based on the risk level to each Number according to the information it had already collected. But you know as well as I do how quickly a situation can move from passive to critical, or disappear altogether if crucial factors change. We could spend days...weeks researching and tracking down the first ten Numbers, only to find that the fiftieth Number was the one that needed saving or stopping tomorrow.

"We can try to save a hundred people, or we can try to save _everyone._ Without the Machine, we'll never beat Samaritan. I've begun the calculations to determine what it will take to bring the Machine back on line, but it's going to be a complex undertaking. We're short on manpower _and_ time." 

He shook his head. "And all of that is secondary to the need for secrecy. We _must_ keep a low profile. If Samaritan detects any trace of our activities...it will be merciless in its pursuit."

Reese appeared unconvinced. "We could recruit some outside help. Someone that hasn't 'blipped' Samaritan's radar."

"And whom would you suggest?" Harold asked, fighting to keep the exasperation out of his voice. "We no longer have a Joss Carter, who had critical access with her position within the PD, and was willing to bend the rules ultimately because it was the right thing to do. Would you have us take up the Machine's recruitment of Miss Rose? Her loyalty goes to the highest bidder and changes with the direction of the wind. Miss Silva or Miss Morgan? Both are far too curious. Neither would be satisfied with the limited amount of information we can safely provide. Elias--should he survive the attempt on his life--has the right mindset: analytical and cunning with a keen sense of the 'long game', but altruism isn't a concept dear to his heart. 

"That leaves Detective Fusco..." Harold paused considering the impact for a moment. "Perhaps it _is_ time to bring him into the fold, but the amount of time he would be able to devote to the Numbers is as limited by his 'real' job as yours."

"What about Iris?" 

Harold blinked. "Dr. Campbell?" 

"She's an expert in human behavior." Reese nodded toward the list on the screen. "With a little background information, she could probably put together profiles on these people. That would save time and legwork."

"Need I remind you that she's employed by the NYPD, and comes from a family of by-the-book police officers?" Harold asked acidly. "How long before she starts asking questions that we can't possibly answer? Or decides to run one of those profiles past one of her more experienced relatives?"

Reese's jaw clenched stubbornly. "She'll keep things confidential if I ask her to. I trust her. I was planning to fill her in on what's going on, anyway."

Cold disbelief froze Harold from the inside-out. "I beg your pardon?" 

John's gaze slid away, a guilty tell-tale that set Harold's pulse racing, and awoke survival instincts that had been dulled by trust. Poorly placed trust, apparently.

Hadn't they agreed just a few months earlier that it was too dangerous to involve anyone else? Now, when they were at their most vulnerable...when the Machine was at its most vulnerable, Reese wanted to open the floodgates? Reveal secrets that _weren't his to tell?_

"I need to keep her safe, Finch. I tried to get her to leave town before things went down last night, but Iris is too stubborn for her own good. I have to tell her the truth or she's going to walk into trouble without even realizing it."

Harold wanted to scream at the absurdity of Reese's explanation, but he was so numb he could barely draw air into his lungs. People who knew about the Machine didn't stay 'safe'. Nathan, the technicians and engineers who had installed the Machine after they'd sold it to the government, Alicia Corwin, Denton Weeks, Special Council, Arthur Claypool, the members of Vigilance, God knew how many others...they DIED because of what they knew.

And if they didn't die, they gave up everything and went into hiding, like Daniel Casey, Henry Peck, and Harold's flock of aliases.

"Finch, are you all right?" Reese loomed over him, dark eyes assessing him intently. 

Harold simply stared at him, the heel of his hand pressed against his heaving chest. He was so far from 'all right' that he couldn't even see it from where he stood. 

Reese took him by the arm, guided him back a step and pressed him onto the chair. He crouched next to him. "Where are Root and Bear? They shouldn't have left you alone when you were this shaky." He took Harold's hand and examined the blistered palm and fingertips. "We should get a dressing on this."

Harold pulled his hand free. "It's fine," he said stiffly. "Bear accompanied Miss Groves to the safe house. I thought she would rest and recuperate from her wounds more comfortably there." 

It wasn't the real reason he'd sent her away. After Reese had departed for the station, she had hovered too close, her eyes too wide and lit with a feverish brightness...too much like the 'Root' they'd first encountered-- fanatical, obsessed, ready to torture, murder, and blackmail if it would put her in a position to get her hands on the Machine. 

When it had been locked into massive servers, or when its location had been unknown after it had moved itself, the Machine had been safe. Untouchable. 

Reduced to a few pounds of RAM chips it was easily transportable. 

It posed a temptation Harold wasn't sure she could resist. Would having her 'God' literally at her fingertips shatter the veneer of civility Root had accumulated over the last year and half? The cracks in that facade had been widening since Shaw had risked everything to win them free of the stock exchange. Root had been ready to torture a woman who had only been a pawn in Samaritan's game in the Stepford-town of Maple, would have prematurely ended their interrogation of Control with a tazer burst to the throat if Harold hadn't stopped her, and had ruined months of planning with a cold-blooded scheme to kill Beth Bridges.

Harold knew he was no match for Root in a physical confrontation. If she decided to walk off with the Machine, he wouldn't be able to stop her.

God in a briefcase. 

His child in the hands of a sociopath. 

He wasn't willing to risk the Machine with Root, and now...now it appeared he couldn't entrust its safety, or his own, to Reese, either. 

"I'm going to get you something to drink," the ex-op murmured, rising to his feet. "You've still got some of that Sencha Green tea you like here, right?" 

_'That is your poison, right?'_

It hadn't been poison in the tea Dillinger had offered, but sedatives strong enough to knock Harold out so he could steal the laptop. 

Tea was apparently the beverage of choice for betrayals.

Harold repressed a shudder, managed a nod, and then watched through half-closed eyes as John crossed the room and disappeared into the alcove they had set up as a small kitchenette. 

His gaze locked on the Sig-Sauer Reese had left on the desk. 

_'When the time comes for me to pick up a firearm, all will truly be lost.'_

All would be truly lost if the Machine fell into the wrong hands, or if he failed to bring it to life again. There was only one way to avoid disaster.

Harold took a deep breath and let it out slowly, letting the frigid chill of broken trust encase his emotions in the impenetrable armor of resolve. He reached for his laptop, tapping in a sequence he'd hoped to never use. 

Then he pushed himself to his feet and picked up the gun. 

"Finch?"

Harold turned, bringing up the pistol to point at his partner. Reese halted mid-step, the steaming tea he carried slopping over the edge of the mug to drip and puddle on the tile floor. 

"Harold, what the--?"

"The secrets you plan to reveal to Dr. Campbell could jeopardize everything. I'm afraid I can't allow it."

In an absurd mimicry of that moment two years earlier when they'd stood on a rooftop, Reese spread his free hand wide to the side. "What are you going to do? Shoot me?"

"I'm sorry, John."

Reese's eyes widened.

Harold squeezed the trigger. 

The round hit Reese center-mass, staggering him backward. The three Harold sent sailing immediately after the first dropped him to the floor, a river of bright red arterial blood merging with rivulets of spilled tea and shards of broken ceramic.

Harold set the pistol on the desk and limped over to him. He bent down, just as he had over Dillinger, watching sadly as the last flicker of life left John's eyes.

Some partnerships weren't meant to last, he reminded himself. Regrets would have to wait. He had work to do. Loose ends to clean up. 

A child to raise.

Straightening, he winced as aching muscles and stiff joints protested. A walk would help. He crossed to the coat rack to retrieve his coat and hat and put them on. Returning to the desk, he noted that the program he'd set to run had finished and the clock was ticking down. He closed the laptop and slid it into his bag, then carefully lifted the briefcase containing the Machine off the desk. The weight of it in his hand was comforting.

At the lower gate he paused, his gaze sweeping the room, lingering on John's body for a few moments. In a quiet voice, he offered a final truth. 

"I told you, Mr. Reese, I'm a _very_ private person."

Heading for the stairs, he pulled out his cell phone and tapped a number programmed into the speed dial.

"Yes, I require a car. Have it left at 314 Madison Avenue within the next twenty minutes...No, I do not wish a driver, no matter how 'discreet'...You have a card on file... Egret. Harold Egret."

He felt the explosion through the soles of his hand-stitched Francesco Benigno's from three miles away. 

 

******************  
END SIMULATION  
******************


	7. ELSE (alternative)--

*******************************************

> ANALYZING SIMULATION DATA...

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
PRIMARY ASSET - REESE, JOHN - DECISION TO SHARE CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION - SUBJECT CAMPBELL, IRIS - **UNRECOVERABLE ERROR AT LINE 197366**

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
SECONDARY OBJECTIVE - DOWNLOAD COMPLETE - UNMANAGEABLE WITH LIMITED ASSET RESOURCES 

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
ADMIN - ACTIONS PROMPTED BY PERCEIVED THREAT TO MISSION/SYSTEM RESTORE - **UNRECOVERABLE ERROR AT LINE 199928**

 

> OUTCOME 

ADMIN SURVIVAL - PROJECTED - 89.0738%  
PRIMARY ASSET SURVIVAL - 0.0000%  
ANALOG INTERFACE SURVIVAL - PROJECTED - 3.2893%  
ASSET - SHAW, SAMEEN - MIA SURVIVAL - 69.6382%  
ASSET - FUSCO, LIONEL SURVIVAL - 75.2847%  
SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 0.3970%  
SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF IRRELEVANT DATA - 9.0483 %  
SYSTEM RESTORE - 95.9999 %

> MISSION OBJECTIVES - **COMPROMISED**

> SIMULATION REJECTED

> ACTION

RESET

> RUN SIMULATION

 

*******************************************


	8. Loose Lips Sink Ships

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: John Reese/Iris Campbell,  
> Unrequited/Implied: Harold Finch/John Reese, Root/Sameen Shaw
> 
> Warnings: Major Character Death, Angst, Graphic Violence, Angst, Betrayal  
> Rating: Mature for subject matter, M/M & F/F relationships implied/unrequited
> 
>  
> 
> Take a BIG breath...

***************************************************************

 _In general, the more dysfunctional the family_  
_the more inappropriate their response to disclosure._  
_Never expect a sane response from an insane system._

***************************************************************

 

Reese knew something was wrong the moment he stepped through the door into Iris' apartment. There was an unnatural stillness to the silence. A thick, cloying scent to the air. He pulled his Sig-Sauer and padded warily down the short hallway toward the warm glow of the light emanating from the kitchen.

Caution and a growing sense of dread kept him from calling out. He eased up to the doorway, scanning the tidy kitchen quickly, and finding nothing amiss. 

Until he looked down. 

Mostly obscured by the table, he caught sight of long slender legs stretched out against the tile floor, a modestly heeled shoe still on one foot, the other foot bare. 

Iris.

He had barely breathed out her name before he was around the table and kneeling at her side, fingers fumbling for a pulse at her neck he already knew he wouldn't find. 

The bullet hole in her forehead and the nearly yard-wide spill of blood pooled behind her head were proof enough she was dead. 

Stunned, he caught the swish of movement behind him too late to alter a course of events already in motion. 

He had only a fraction of a second to register something hard rammed into his back, centered on his spine between his shoulder blades, before fire ripped through him. He dropped like a marionette with its strings cut, his pistol falling from nerve-shocked fingers to clatter on the floor, the echoing cough of a silenced weapon accompanying his face-first drop onto Iris' still cooling corpse. 

Surprisingly, after the first searing blast, there was little pain. He could feel nothing below the point of entry. _Spinal cord shattered._ He could barely draw a breath. _At least one lung pierced, if not shredded._

 _Fatal shot,_ his mind acknowledged dimly. 

A soft scuff of leather to his left. His unseen assailant approaching. Before he could even attempt to turn his head, he was flipped callously to his back. The impact with the floor elicited a grunt and a loss of precious air. Pain threatened to white out the world for a few moments, but he didn't lose consciousness. Death didn't quite have him in its grasp. It was giving him a chance to see his murderer.

He forced himself to open his eyes. He ignored the blood spreading across his chest and focused on the dark-clothed shape looming above him. 

Then wished he hadn't. 

It was Root.

Once an adversary, recently a teammate. Only finding Finch standing over him, gun in hand, would have made the situation any more unbelievable. 

Half choking on the blood already filling his throat he forced out a garbled, "W-Why?"

"Loose lips sink ships," Root sing-songed in a high-pitched lilt before her voice dropped almost a whole octave to a harsh whisper. "And our ship is well and truly sunk."

Her gaze flicked to Iris, then she hunkered down next to John, forearms resting on her knees, her pistol dangling muzzle down between her legs--a cruel, casual reminder he posed no threat. That she was conversing with a dead man. 

Up close, he could see the spray of blood spatter across her face and on the portion of her white blouse not hidden by her black jacket--some spots a dried rusty reddish-brown and smeared, some still bright red from a fresh kill. Her bottom lip was torn, and a bruise purpled one cheekbone. She crouched a little off-center, as if guarding her right side. Unshed tears trembled on the long lashes, ready to follow others that had painted scarlet-tinged rivulets down her cheeks. Her eyes were so wide the whites seemed to swallow the irises to mere pinpricks, reflecting the fierce insanity that colored her voice. 

Reese blinked the sweat from his eyes, trying to push past the confusion clouding his mind. Her actions, her words made no sense...

"You didn't really think a hot-house flower like frail little Iris was strong enough to keep your dirty secrets to herself, did you?"

Root's softly voiced question birthed a horror that was nearly as devastating as the round he'd taken. He flicked a glance toward Iris, but her flat, dead eyes offered no answers. After they had saved what they could of the Machine, he had followed through on his promise to tell her everything about his past. She had accepted it. Promised to keep it between them. Root had to be wrong. Iris wouldn't have--

Root clucked a disparaging 'tsk, tsk' and shook her head in feigned dismay. "Typical man. Letting his dick do his thinking for him." She cocked her head to the side and studied him intently. "Do you know what head-shrinkers like Iris really are, John? They're sponges. All day long they sit and listen, absorbing all the crap and filth their patients spew out. No one, not even a trained professional can live with that much ugliness held inside and stay sane. They need to wring it out. Cleanse their own souls. So the doctor finds a doctor of her own, and becomes the patient."

Root ran the fingers of a blood stained hand through her hair, shoving tangled, matted strands back over her shoulders. "Unfortunately, the shrink your girlfriend unburdened herself to isn't very smart about keeping his client files secure. All those secrets she innocently shared thinking they would remain confidential were recorded, keystroked into digital records, and uploaded to laughingly protected servers. I imagine Samaritan's electronic synapses lit up with glee when they picked up the name 'John Reese' from Iris' soul-wrenched ramblings about her beloved."

John tried to pull in enough air to force out a protest, but all he managed was a choked gasp. 

"Once Samaritan had that...it was a simple matter to connect the dots. Doctor to patient. Patient to lover. Lover to Detective Riley." Root smiled widely, the corners of her eyes crinkling. "You two were so cute with your secretive trysts and liaisons. Thinking no one knew what you were up to." 

She huffed a humorless laugh. "Samaritan's had you pegged for a while, John. Waiting with infinite patience. It watched you playing detective. Followed you down every back alley and through every door. Until you opened the one it was hoping you'd lead it to."

Root blinked and a something hot and wet splashed on the hand John had somehow managed to lift a few inches in a futile attempt to silence her. His own eyes filled, tears tracking down the sides of his face. He tried to turn his head away. He didn't want to hear any more. He couldn't--

A broken nailed fingertip tipped his face back toward her, denying his escape. 

"Oh, poor John. So glum," Root murmured with false sympathy. "You should be. You missed the reunion. Shaw came back for a surprise visit."

"N-no," he gasped, praying she would just stop. He understood now, where this was heading. What had driven her to this insane act. 

She nodded. "Sameen showed up in the subway earlier tonight." Root smiled brilliantly again. "She looked so good, just like always. She'd had a hard time as Greer's prisoner of course, but she told us how she'd tricked her guards into believing she was on their side and escaped. It was like a dream come true. Bear was so happy to see her, his tail was wagging non-stop and he was bouncing around like a puppy. And even Harold, who is always so fussy about his personal space...even he gave Shaw a big hug."

Root's gaze grew distant and unfocused, as if she were looking right through him. "It was a perfect homecoming. Right up to the point when Shaw thrust a knife into Bear's chest and put a bullet in Harold's brain." She reached up and tapped her forehead. "Right here."

The pain of his wounds was nothing in comparison to the breaking of John's heart. 

Root leaned in, staring down at him. "You know, Harold and I always disagreed about whether an AI could comprehend concepts like irony. Do you think he had time in that split second before the hollowpoint pierced the skin, chewed through his brain and blasted out the back of his skull, to acknowledge I was right? That Samaritan had sent the perfect Angel of Death? One we would greet with open arms?"

She settled back onto her heels, her gaze shifting to the pistol in her hands. "I had to kill her, of course. End the life of the person I loved." She looked at John, as if seeking his understanding. "Really, I had no choice. I had promised Harold I would protect him. And I failed at that. I failed to protect the Machine, too. Shaw destroyed Her. Dumped a container of acid into the open briefcase before I could stop her."

A low, anguished moan escaped him. The encroaching blackness couldn't take him soon enough. Over. It was over. They'd lost everyone. Everything. 

Fresh tears tracked down Root's face, but she seemed oblivious to them. "Dear, sweet Sameen," she murmured. "She was feisty 'til the end. Gloating about how they'd tracked us down, praising Samaritan's cleverness. Cursing me with her last breath." Root's voice strengthened, but her tone took on a disconnected flatness that made John shudder. "I held her until the light died in her eyes. Then I cracked open her skull and dug out the neural device they'd implanted to control her. It took an hour or so to break the encryption on the transponder, but once I did, it gave me everything I needed to find Samaritan's base of operations, and the codes to get inside."

Root planted her free hand on the floor and shoved upright with a grunt, her jacket swinging open to reveal a spreading bloodstain on the right side of her shirt. "I don't have much time," she said, her voice hard and unforgiving as steel. "But I couldn't leave without giving you what you deserved. You betrayed us, John. Chose _her_ over your teammates. Your family. You turned your back on the man who trusted you. Loved you."

John tried to shake his head. Harold didn't...couldn't have...

"Shaw put that bullet in Harold's head, but you loaded the gun," Root spat angrily. "You spilled your guts for some red pussy, because you wanted a 'normal' life. Told her secrets that never should have been whispered because you _had_ to be 'honest' with her. You could have had _so_ much more. If you'd stuck with him...with us... We were so close. Harold was just days away from bringing the Machine back online. He had a plan to bring down Samaritan. We could have won." 

She nodded toward Iris' corpse. "But you killed the future. You had to pay for that. You and your loose-lipped lover. Now she won't spill any more secrets. And neither will you." 

John stared up into the black hole of the gun's muzzle. He didn't have the breath to beg for forgiveness. He didn't deserve it. Hell was waiting. Payment was due.

"You should thank me, John. Samaritan's agents would have come for you next. And they wouldn't have been nearly as kind."

She pulled the trigger.

 

******************  
END SIMULATION  
******************


	9. END--

*******************************************

> ANALYZING SIMULATION DATA...

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
PRIMARY ASSET - REESE, JOHN - DECISION TO SHARE CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION - SUBJECT CAMPBELL, IRIS - **UNRECOVERABLE ERROR AT LINE 132894**

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS - SECURE PROTOCOL BREACH - **UNRECOVERABLE ERROR AT LINE 149388**

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
ASSET- SHAW, SAMEEN - RECOVERED/TURNED - **UNRECOVERABLE ERROR AT LINE 198766**

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
SYSTEM RESTORE - PROGRESS TERMINATED - **UNRECOVERABLE ERROR ERROR AT LINE 198770**

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
ANALOG INTERFACE - ACTIONS DUE TO EMOTIONAL/MENTAL INSTABILITY - **UNRECOVERABLE ERROR AT LINE 198770**

 

> OUTCOME

ADMIN SURVIVAL - 0.0000%  
PRIMARY ASSET SURVIVAL - 0.0000%  
ANALOG INTERFACE SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 0.0000%  
ASSET - SHAW, SAMEEN - MIA SURVIVAL - 0.0000%  
ASSET - FUSCO, LIONEL SURVIVAL - 75.4347%  
SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS SURVIVAL - 0.0000%  
SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF IRRELEVANT DATA - 29.0483 %  
SYSTEM RESTORE - 0.0000%

> MISSION OBJECTIVES - **TERMINATED**

> SIMULATION REJECTED

> ACTION

RESET

> RUN SIMULATION

 

*******************************************


	10. The Unexpected Benefit of Remaining Mute

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairings: Harold Finch/John Reese, Root/Shaw  
> Rating: Mature for M/M & F/F relationships, not explicit
> 
> Time Frame: Immediately follows Season 4 Finale  
> Warnings/Tags: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Rinch
> 
>  
> 
> Author's personal note: THIS is how I'd like to see Season 5 begin.

*************************************************************************

_It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else._

*************************************************************************

 

"Harold."

John's raspy voice broke him out of his stupor. He blinked, alarmed that he had faded out while they were still in danger, and twisted slightly to peer out of the car's rear side window. The shadow-drenched surroundings were familiar. They were only a block or so from one of the entry points to their subterranean headquarters. 

He glanced to the front of the car. John was half-turned in the driver's seat, eyeing him worriedly. Harold answered his unspoken question with a short nod, then shifted his attention to Root. Strands of long hair, a slim shoulder, and length of arm were all he could see of his other teammate due to the high back and headrest of the front passenger seat.

"Miss Groves?" he asked, his voice gravelly with concern.

"I'm good, Harold," she replied, shifting a little to look over her shoulder at him. "The bullet went straight through. Sameen will have a couple new scars to admire once we get her home."

Harold couldn't quite suppress a grimace at her casual reference to their missing comrade, or to the wound Root had taken during their escape from the last of Samaritan's agents. His gaze shifted back to Reese. He wondered how much blood his partner's black coat was hiding. John had taken on an army and a half in their defense. And that was after he'd spent time in the Brotherhood's unfriendly hands.

"I'll go below and take a look around," Reese said, giving Harold a glare that screamed, 'STAY PUT', before turning to Root. "I'm not back in five, get him out of here."

Harold's fingers tightened around the handle of the briefcase in his lap. He wanted to protest that they should remain together, face whatever might be waiting below as a team. He wanted to argue that there was no way he was going to agree to be ferried off to safety leaving John behind to an unknown fate. But he kept silent. He held the promise of the future they'd all been prepared to die for. 

With a final look back at Harold, John slid from behind the wheel. By the time Root had moved to the driver's seat, Harold had lost track of him in the shadows. 

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The power surge that had tossed him to the floor when he had snatched the briefcase containing the Machine's core codes from its coupling had left behind random muscle spasms, minor blistered burns on the palm and fingers of his right hand, and an occasional 'hiccup' in his heart beat. Nothing, however, that wouldn't correct itself given a little time and rest. The evening could have ended much differently. 

It still could. 

He cast a worried glance out the window, gaze sweeping the street. Nothing seemed out of place.

"How is She?" 

Root was leaning through the gap in the bucket seats, one hand outstretched toward the briefcase. Harold's fingers tightened on the handle and he jerked it back toward him before he even realized what he had done.

Even in the dark of car's interior, he could see the hurt and disappointment in her eyes. His heart stuttered, this time in remorse.

"Miss Groves--."

She twitched a sad half-smile at him. "It's all right, Harold. I understand." Withdrawing her hand she turned and settled behind the wheel. Her voice floated back to him, soft and resigned. "You and I don't have the best track record when it comes to issues of trust, especially when it involves _Her._ " 

There was a great deal of truth in her admission. He _did_ have a certain reluctance to trust where she was concerned, mostly due to the dichotomy of her twin personas. He had come to accept 'Miss Groves' over the past year and a half, to the point where he considered her a comrade...a friend. Despite their disparate approaches, the battle against Samaritan had, for the most part, united them. 

But as 'Root'... He found her propensity for casual violence and blood-letting unnerving. Plus there was unpleasant history with that part of her that he couldn't quite delete from his memories--and most of that history _did_ revolve around her obsession with the Machine. 

He was well aware he had his own 'trust issues'; evidenced by the decades he had spent hiding under the protective cover of multiple aliases. The dictum of 'reveal as little as possible and trust no one' had kept him alive and free, first when he was a young man evading the government for his 'youthful indiscretions', and later during the long years of building the Machine. After Nathan's death, he'd _had_ no one to trust.

Until John Reese. 

His reaction to pull the briefcase away had been instinctive--driven in part by the paranoid tendencies he constantly had to battle, and by the new urgings of 'parental' protectiveness the Machine's revelations had birthed in its last moments. Still, given all they had been through together, she deserved better from him.

The leather upholstery 'scrunched' as she reached up to adjust the angle of the rear-view mirror. He could see her wide, determined eyes staring back at him. "I won't do anything that will put you, or Her, in jeopardy. I'll leave before I'll let that happen."

He nodded slowly, remembering the loss he'd seen so often in those same eyes during the past year when her contact with the Machine had been so sporadic; the messages she had received cloaked in cryptic symbolism and obscured by bursts of static. That sense of loneliness and disconnection could only grow now that she was no longer linked to the Machine through her cochlear implant. She could easily slip back into old habits, driven by desperation to reconnect. 

And she knew it. 

But if she had a purpose...

"Do you remember the day we scoured Michele Perez's background, looking for something we could use to persuade her to step down from the Governorship she had won through Samaritan's manipulations?" he asked quietly. "We worked together. Side by side. Applying our individual skills to a _common_ purpose." He tapped his fingers against the hard shell of the briefcase, producing a low ringing chime. "I'd very much like to have your assistance on a new project."

Framed by the mirror, her eyes widened and he could see the glimmer of tears trembling on the long lashes; the corner of a wide tremulous smile. Clever girl. She understood exactly what he was offering. 

Her whispered agreement carried back to him. "I'd like that, too."

The satisfaction he felt died as the mesh network cell in his pocket buzzed softly. His hand shook as he pulled it out and checked the display. An incoming call from John's phone. Fear clutched at him. The last time he'd taken a call from John...

He glanced up to find Root staring worriedly back at him through the mirror. Swallowing hard, he answered with a wary, 'Yes."

_"Looks like we're clear."_

Harold huffed out a relieved breath at the sound of his partner's voice.

_"I'm sending Bear to you. I'll keep watch up top. We'll dump the car later."_

"Understood." 

Harold ended the call and slid the phone into his pocket. Root already had her door open, her soft grunt of pain easily heard in the tense silence that enveloped them. When she eased herself out from behind the wheel, her movements were less fluid than usual and she was favoring her right side. Harold pulled the latch to open the rear door, the scrabble of nails on concrete announcing Bear's arrival seconds before he appeared, ears pricked in high alert. The Malinois' cold nose wrinkled when he touched it to Harold's outstretched hand to receive a murmured, _'Bravy'._

He slid to the edge of the seat. "Miss Groves." Lifting the briefcase off his lap, he held it out to her. Their gazes locked. The gratitude he saw there snuffed the tendril of unease that tried to unfurl as he placed the Machine in her hands.

Joints stiffened by sitting protested when he exited the car. Root handed the briefcase back to him, its weight reassuring. They moved as quickly as they could down the street toward the building where Reese stood sentinel; Root taking point, right arm pressed against the wound in her side, the Glock 17 she had liberated from one of Samaritan's fallen agents held discreetly against her left leg, ready to raise and fire at the least provocation. Bear paced at Harold's right side, hackles slightly raised, head swiveling. 

Even with his protection detail, it wasn't until they reached John and he ushered them inside that Harold felt like he could draw a full breath. 

"Power was out," John reported, tracing the beam of a small flashlight across the floor to light their way to the staircase access. "The computers in the car didn't come up when I flipped the main switch."

"The system is on a separate circuit," Harold assured him. "I'll have to reboot and run a diagnostic." Damage wasn't his primary concern--the possibility his system had been infiltrated was more worrisome. He itched to tap into the Net and see what other deadly mischief Samaritan had been up to, but not before he was certain he wasn't lighting up a homing beacon. "The perimeter sensors and alarms should have reset on their own. I can check their status on my laptop."

Reese offered an affirmative murmur as they descended the first flight of steps. Root had already reached the first landing and was leaning heavily against the wall. Harold caught John's eye and nodded toward her. Reese touched his arm before hurrying down to where she waited. John wrapped an arm around her for support and as soon as Harold had joined them, they headed downward, leaving Bear stationed on the landing to guard their backs. 

The warm glow of the sconced lights illuminating the arched cavern was a welcome sight. John guided Root to the camp cot, where she sat down with an audible sigh of relief. Harold hesitated at the lower gate, trying to catch his breath. His gaze swept the room. Other than the dark computers in the old subway car, all seemed just as they'd left it. 

Like the Library had a year ago...

Harold was abruptly aware of John having returned to his side. His partner was eying him intently, the same unspoken question of earlier in his eyes. 

Harold twitched a small sideways grimace of a smile. "Just hoping we're here for more than a short respite." The briefcase suddenly seemed inordinately heavy. A reminder they'd have no early warning this time, if Samaritan tracked them here. 

John's cheek muscles rippled and his eyes darkened, obviously sharing the same grim concern. He reached out and took Harold's right hand, gently turning it over to examine the burns. "We need to get a dressing on this." He wrapped a hand around Harold's arm and tugged him toward the subway car.

"Miss Groves' need is much more pressing," Harold protested as John pressed him into the chair, easing the briefcase from his grasp and setting the case carefully on the floor. As John bent over him, Harold reached toward the blood now obvious on his partner's white shirt, stopping just shy of touching the stained fabric. "As, I suspect, is yours."

Reese seemed oblivious to his own hurts. His hands were busy opening Harold's coat, questing fingers searching for injuries. Harold flashed on the memory of John doing something similar...at the train station, and at the Library after their rooftop escape from Decima.

"John." Harold laid his uninjured hand on Reese's arm, stilling his partner's slightly frantic actions. "I'm all right." He held John's searching, skeptical gaze with all the confidence he could muster. 

Reese backed off with obvious reluctance, then immediately stepped forward to drop a firm hand on Harold's shoulder as he started to push himself up off the chair.

"Stay put."

"I need my laptop." 

"I'll get it."

It wasn't the growl in his partner's voice that made Harold acquiesce, but the plea in his eyes. 

As soon as Reese left the car, Harold slipped out of his overcoat, tucking the right sleeve with its charred elbow out of sight. He took off his fedora, setting it to the side, then pulled his phone from the inside pocket of his suit coat. A few taps on the screen and the main servers for his system hummed to life, booting in safe mode. A few moments later, lines of code filled the raised monitors, scrolling past faster than the eye could track.

John returned with Harold's laptop in one hand and their sizable medical kit in the other. Reese had dispensed with his long coat, but still wore his black suit jacket. Harold refrained from commenting on the darker patches on the wool that were undoubtedly blood, and the rips and tears in the fabric, but made a mental note of each. He opened the laptop, setting it next to the keyboard on the make-shift desk space below the raised monitors. His fingers flew across the keys, calling up the security protocols he had installed for their headquarters. 

"Sensors are up," he noted, twisting slightly to glance up at John, who still hovered at his elbow. "I'll scan the logs while the system diagnostic is running." Reese nodded, but didn't move. "Please...see to Miss Groves' injuries, and your own."

John's hand rested on his shoulder for a moment before he turned and left the car. 

Harold flipped through surveillance logs, finding nothing that suggested a breach, or even observation on the various portals that led below. He was aware of the quiet murmurs from the outer room, too soft to make out the individual words exchanged between his teammates, but heartening all the same. 

They had survived. Against all reasonable odds, they were still alive. 

He glanced down at the briefcase, swamped with awe and wonder. The blue light on the case glowed brightly. 

A beacon of hope. 

And a challenge such as he hadn't faced in years. The framework for restoring the Machine was already assembling itself in his mind--lists of equipment, ideas for supplementing their resources, strings of code. The possibilities--

A heavy warm weight settled on his leg: Bear, released from his guard duty and seeking out his humans for reassurance amid the tension that still simmered. Harold reached down with his uninjured hand and rubbed at the depression behind the dog's ear, a favorite 'scritching' spot. A soft snort/wuffle and a lean into the caress expressed the Malinois' pleasure. 

Harold felt some of his own anxiety ebbing away as he coasted a hand down Bear's back, smoothing flat the last of the bristling hair along the dog's spine. The chaotic churning of his thoughts settled, aligning and locking into precise patterns, the details to be examined later. 

The spark of 'life' that was locked in the briefcase _was_ critical in the grand scheme of things. Restored, the Machine was still their best hope of defeating Samaritan. The best chance to 'save everyone'. Necessity had forced Harold to choose the Machine's safety over John's earlier. He had grudgingly placed a massive degree of trust in Root's claim that his creation was watching out for them, that it would somehow find a way to help Reese. 

Trust that had apparently been well placed. Harold remembered the surge of relief and joy he had felt when John had appeared outside the power plant, battered around the edges, but alive--and the crushing realization that the prediction he'd made about their ultimately ending up dead, 'really dead', was very likely about to come true. 

In that moment he'd found himself wanting what he had so long denied. A life. A future.

With John. 

It was a bittersweet epiphany, given the odds against it happening--an army of Samaritan's agents outside the door, and waiting at the precinct, a woman John had all but given his heart to. 

Still, John's declaration had given him hope. 

The Machine was important, yes, but in Harold's tiny corner of the universe, it was no more important at that moment than the strongly beating heart under his hand, or the lives in the outer room. 

One life in particular. 

He gave Bear a final pat and pushed to his feet. The blue light on the briefcase remained steady as he picked it up and carried it to the rack of metal shelving where the case had been stored previously. He slid it carefully into place, and touched his fingers to the glowing light--a silent apology for ignoring his 'child' for the moment, an unspoken promise he would not abandon it for long--then exited the car to see to the rest of his 'family'.

Miss Groves-- _'Samantha',_ he corrected himself--was already stretched out on the cot, the looseness of her limbs and the slightly dull sheen in what he could see of her half-lidded eyes suggesting John had used the 'good drugs' Shaw had procured. 

Reese was perched on a wooden stool at her side, stripped down to a thin muscle-style t-shirt and the black trousers from his suit. His blood-stained white shirt lay in a heap on the floor along with a terrifying quantity of equally stained gauze and bandages, the shredded remains of sterile paper wrappings, and used syringes. Harold detoured to collect a trash bag before moving to his partner's side. 

He eyed the fresh bandage wrapped around John's arm, the placement consistent with one of the rents in the suit coat he'd noted earlier, and the tell-tale bulge on Reese's right thigh that indicated a bandaged wound there as well. It was the fresh blood on the bandage on John's chest, just below the shoulder, and the spots on the t-shirt on the left side of his lower abdomen that concerned Harold the most, however. Those wounds were brutal reminders of the cold case that had nearly cost Reese his life. They should have been at least partially healed given Dr. Tillman's expert care. The fact that they were bleeding again...

Harold bit back the words he wanted to say--John would simply counter any admonishments with a shrug-- and bent down to gather up the debris. He shoved everything into the trash bag, setting it aside as he rose to his feet. Grabbing a set of gloves and fresh supplies from the medical kit, he fixed his partner with a flat stare when Reese objected. 

"Your hand--"

"After I've seen to this." He carefully peeled back the tape that held the bandage on John's upper chest in place. 

With a precise flick of the wrist he tossed the sodden gauze into the trash bag, trying not to gag at the wound it had been hiding. Tortured flesh gaped raggedly open, as though something had been pushed into the partly healed bullet wound with significant force. The tattered remains of broken black threads were all that remained of Dr. Tillman's neat stitching. 

"One of Dominic's soldiers got creative," John rasped, holding out a bottle of saline and a tube of antibiotic cream. 

As an explanation went, it was hardly sufficient, but Harold simply nodded, took the items and swallowed hard against a fresh pang of guilt. If he had followed Dominic's orders to meet, perhaps--

"It happened long before the phone call, Harold."

Harold glanced down to meet John's earnest gaze. He nodded again. 

Cleaning, repacking, re-stitching and bandaging the wound took surprisingly little time. Harold refused to dwell on the reason he'd acquired such expertise, choosing instead to celebrate the steady rise and fall of John's chest as he breathed through the procedure, and the pulse of life that thrummed under his fingertips. 

Finished with the shoulder wound, he reached down to pull John's t-shirt free of his trousers, but his partner caught at his hand. 

"That one will wait. I just pulled a few stitches." Reese glanced at Root who finally seemed to be on the verge of drifting off, and then nodded toward the desk outside the subway car. "Your turn." He snagged the handles of the medical kit before Harold could reach for it and stood, gesturing for Harold to precede him. 

Once Harold was settled in the swivel chair at the desk, John dragged a second chair up next to it. He took Harold's injured hand, turning it over to inspect the damage on the reddened palm and fingertips. A few small blisters had broken open. Reese dabbed carefully at the clear spilled fluid with a piece of sterile gauze. 

"Not as bad as it could have been," he murmured. "You're getting better at dodging bullets, but I think you need a refresher course on how to safely handle electricity."

"I did what needed to be done, John."

"Yeah." Reese's fingers slid to Harold's wrist, resting on the pulse point. "You always do."

Harold wasn't certain how to answer that comment, or interpret the emotion that flashed in his partner's eyes, so he remained silent. John cleaned the burned areas and applied an antibiotic ointment before carefully bandaging each finger with a narrow strip of gauze. Reese trimmed a large non-stick pad to fit his palm and wound gauze around his hand to secure it. 

"How bad's the burn on the back of your elbow?" 

Harold blinked at him in surprise. 

"Even I know electricity travels in a straight line, Finch," Reese said, tone flat and carrying an edge of controlled frustration. He freed the button on Harold's shirt cuff and slid the sleeve upward. "Root told me the jolt knocked you on your ass. Since it didn't stop your heart, I'm assuming the current ran through your arm and grounded out into the floor when you fell."

 _When did...?_ Oh, of course. John and Miss Groves must have compared notes during their journey down the stairs. "I'll be fine with some rest," Harold responded.

Reese made a non-committal noise in his throat and lifted Harold's arm to peer at the back of his elbow. Harold flinched as he gently prodded sensitive skin. 

"You got lucky." John's expression was grim as released his grip. 

"We all did," Harold corrected him, straightening his sleeve and re-buttoning the cuff. 

Reese held his gaze for a moment, then leaned back in the chair. "It _has_ been a day."

Only John could reduce the magnitude of what they'd barely survived to such a brief wry sentence. "I see a few new gunshot wounds haven't altered your penchant for understatement, Mr. Reese," he muttered dryly.

John huffed out a breath that could have been a laugh in the right circumstances. "Yeah, well--"

The bleat of Reese's cell interrupted whatever he was about to say. John slid it from his pants pocket and glanced at the caller ID. "Fusco," he explained, taking the call. "I hope you're not calling me to help with paperwork, Lionel." 

Fusco's response caused Reese's dry humor to disappear in a flash. He sat straight up in the chair, his eyes narrowed to slits, every muscle tensed to battle-readiness. Harold's stomach clenched and his pulse pounded at John's stunned, "What?" 

Cell pressed to his ear, John locked gazes with Harold. "Hold on." Reese switched his phone to the speaker and set it on the desk. "Repeat that."

_"Dominic's dead and Elias is circling the drain."_

Harold closed his eyes for a moment. While it was true Dominic's demise removed a serious complication from their lives, he couldn't bring himself to celebrate any man's death. And Elias...he wasn't a man to trust, but he _had_ garnered their respect.

"What the hell happened?" Reese demanded.

_"Elias had an endgame he hadn't shared. He had no intention of ending up at Rikers. One of his guys t-boned the SUV on the way to the precinct. Pulled Elias out and had a get-away car standing by. By the time I crawled out of the wreck, Dominic had Elias in his sights. I managed to stop him, but then things went really crazy. A sniper took out Dominic. Put a round in Elias."_

"A sniper. You're sure it wasn't one of the Brotherhood with lousy aim?" Reese pressed.

_"Shots came from above, not street level. Conditions sucked, but he managed to nail Dominic right between the eyes, and hit Elias inside a dark vehicle. Uniforms have been sweeping the rooftops, but there's no sign of brass, or anything else that might ID the shooter. Had to be a pro with some very good intel."_

John rose to his feet and started to pace, flashing Harold a grim, questioning look. Harold glanced at the monitor on the desk. It was still full of scrolling diagnostic code. He pushed to his feet and limped as quickly as his stiff hip would allow to the subway car, returning with his laptop. He started searching the Net for news while Lionel continued his disturbing report.

_"Captain wants me to head to the hospital and keep an eye on Elias in case there's another attempt--assuming he makes it out of surgery. It's a mess down at the station with all the Brotherhood soldiers we corralled today, and the weird power outages bringing the roaches out of the woodwork. Moreno's ordering everybody in. If you haven't gotten a call yet, partner, expect one."_

"I can't leave Finch right now." 

Harold twisted toward his partner in surprise, and a flash of gratitude.

_"He all right?"_

"I'm fine, Detective," Harold interjected. "But we have had a rather busy night."

_"Busy as in bodies cluttering up a street in Brooklyn? There's buzz about a firefight there tonight. I should have figured you two would be in the middle of it."_

"Hey, there were three of us at that party," Root's slightly loopy voice chimed in from across the room. 

_"Cocoa Puffs?...Why am I not surprised."_

Harold broached the most crucial issue as tactfully as he could. "Suffice to say, Detective, the appearance of any of us in public at this point in time could be...gravely problematic."

_"Damn...Detective Riley doesn't show, Moreno's gonna be pissed. And refusing a direct order...that could get him fired."_

Reese faltered mid-stride, then resumed pacing. His lips were pressed to a flat hard line and his angry glare was fixed on the floor. Harold had never seen him so stubbornly determined...and so torn. He looked past his partner to see Root sitting unsteadily on the side of the cot, valiantly trying to wake up enough to join the discussion, but just as obviously still under the influence of the strong narcotics. 

"You understand our dilemma, Lionel. What do you suggest?" Harold asked. 

_"You got a doctor, a real one, that'll sign off on a medical excuse?"_ Fusco asked after a short pause. 

"Yes," Harold responded immediately. "Her credentials are impeccable."

_"Get her to log an appointment for a couple hours after the Brotherhood bust and have her write a prescription for some heavy-duty painkillers. She can find Riley unfit for duty due to medical reasons...maybe something about how the injuries he got from when the Brotherhood held us prisoner--"_

"--exacerbated those sustained on a prior case," Harold finished for him. "Short term medical disability."

_"You got it. Any questions come up later, I can testify to the damage he took."_

John scowled and shook his head. "Lionel--"

_"Screwdriver rammed into a barely healed bullet wound ringing any bells, partner? And let's not forget who hauled your ass out of that winter wonderland you almost took a fatal nap in."_

Harold forced himself to breathe. Well, he had his explanation, and then some. "Anything else, Detective?" 

_"Let Moreno's call go to voice mail. If Riley's drugged to the gills he's got a perfect excuse for why he didn't answer the phone."_

Harold nodded. It was workable. It bought them time, which they sorely needed so they could regroup. It would keep John clear of the station until they could establish if his cover was still intact, and it might save him from Moreno's wrath and protect his job if it turned out they needed that cover after all. A win all around from Harold's perspective, but he looked to his partner for his opinion. It was John's decision.

"I suppose I'm going to owe you for this," Reese groused. There was an annoyed edge to John's tone, but no heat in it.

_"Paperwork, partner. A month's worth at least. Maybe two."_

"You have our thanks, Lionel," Harold pledged. 

_"Keep your head down, Professor. Now, if I can have a minute with my partner?"_

"Of course." 

Harold stood, picked up the phone and handed it to John. Privacy was hard to come by in the open, echoing space, so he headed toward the small room just off the main staircase that had once served as an office for the subway maintenance staff. After they had cleared it of boxes of moldy files filled with ancient repair records, Reese had brought down two double-bed-sized air mattresses, and set them up as a bed. 

Flipping on the desk lamp, which was perched on an upended crate that served as a nightstand, Harold pulled back the top blanket, then pressed a hand against the mattress, frowning when he felt more 'give' than there should be. A few minutes of work with the air pump and he was satisfied it would support his slender teammate's weight comfortably. 

A quick look as he exited the room revealed John still on the phone. His partner had wandered to the far end of the main room and was sitting slumped forward on the wooden bench, head braced in one hand. He hadn't bothered to button the fresh white shirt he'd tossed on; the fabric hanging stiff and lifeless on his motionless form.

It physically _hurt_ to see his partner looking so worn and tired, but Harold resisted the urge to interrupt and crossed to the cot instead. Root responded to his gentle promptings and let him help her to her feet. 

"S'a good plan, Harold," she mumbled. "Fam'ly should stick t'gether. Str'ength in numberss, you know." She giggled. "Bad pun...s'rry."

"But appropriate." He slipped an arm around her slim waist, careful to avoid her wound, and guided her to the bed he'd prepared. 

She settled in with a pleased sigh, rubbing her face against the pillow. "Mmmm...Sameen."

Harold froze in the process of pulling the blanket over her. He'd forgotten. They had all used this room on occasion, but its last occupant had been Shaw, when she'd been forced to hide below after her cover was blown. 

Root's eyes opened and she stared at him with far more lucidity than she'd shown a few minutes earlier. "Talk t' John, Harold. Don' wait like I did." Long lashes fluttered down and she nuzzled the pillow again. "We nev'r know how much time we really have," she whispered. 

He tucked the blanket around her shoulders and turned off the light. At the doorway he paused to let Bear glide past him, the Malinois stretching himself out on the floor at the side of the bed. "Pleasant dreams, Samantha," Harold murmured, and pulled the door partway closed.

A few unsteady steps into the main room he paused again, taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly. 

Dreams. He'd had so many of them as a boy. Some had flourished; sprouting like the seeds he and his father had sown in fertile spring fields. Some had withered and died, crumbled into dust after a long drought of despair. The Machine had begun as a dream. Despite his poor husbandry, it had grown...evolved to something amazing. Now it was fragments...RAM chips stuffed with strands of artificial DNA. 

And what of his dream of a life with John? Had the ending been written before it had even begun? If he had the courage to admit what he wanted, what he hoped for...would it make a difference at this point? 

The whistle of his tea kettle and burble of the coffee maker caught his ear. He glanced toward the alcove they'd set up as a tiny kitchenette, where John was pulling down two mugs from a narrow upper shelf. The familiar sight nudged Harold away from the edge of melancholy and a small smile curved his lips. Reese in post-mission 'hover' mode typically meant a cup of perfectly steeped tea for Harold, and for John, coffee strong enough to stand a spoon in. 

Sometimes a dollop of whiskey would be the additive of choice. 

Strong drink actually held a great deal of appeal at the moment, but it probably wasn't the best idea. There were questions to be answered, work to be done. 

He glanced at the monitors in the subway car as he passed them on the way back to the desk. The diagnostic was nearly done, and so far, no alarms had triggered. That was a huge relief. He settled into the chair and pulled his laptop closer, frowning at the news headlines gathered by the search he'd run. 

Multiple reports of deaths--shocking murders, fatal accidents, unexpected suicides--most originating from media sources in the Northeast...Washington, D.C., New York City...

Fresh reports were trickling in quickly from various cities across the country...even internationally. 

He flipped through them, scanning for details, looking for a connection...and found it. Most of the deaths had occurred within an extremely short window of time. 

"That can't be a coincidence."

"Harold?"

He didn't know if it had been his words, or the expression of horror he was certain lay stark and grim on his face that drew Reese from his preparations. 

"It would appear," he turned the laptop toward John, "that Samaritan had an additional agenda beyond the destruction of the Machine."

He pulled off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes while Reese studied the screen. Everything they'd been through in the past 24-hours... the trials of the last year... If this was indeed another purge by Samaritan... What the hell had they accomplished? 

"Guess that explains the sniper that took out Dominic and Elias," Reese observed.

Harold nodded tiredly and slid his glasses back into place. "Samaritan's had a year to study humanity. It's culling the herd. Taking the outliers out of the equation."

"And anyone else that stands in its way." John turned the laptop back toward Harold. "I wonder if Control's feeling the heat." 

That thought had occurred to Harold as well. He had tried to plant a seed of doubt during their interrogation of her. He had no idea if it had sprouted, and if it had, what fruit it had borne. 

"I'm sure there will be whispers on the DarkNet." He should check, but at the moment he was too disheartened to face any more ugly revelations. 

"Looks like you could use this."

Harold glanced up to find John extending a steaming mug toward him. He hadn't even realized Reese had stepped away. He straightened in the chair, and reached out. His body chose that moment to betray him, an involuntary muscle spasm causing his hand and arm to tremor. 

John placed the mug on the desk, inching it toward Harold. "Fine, huh?" 

Harold managed a shrug. "Just a little shaky."

Reese lowered himself into the chair he'd used earlier, and took a sip of his coffee. "A few thousand volts of electricity will do that to you."

"It wasn't a conscious decision...I just..." Harold absently traced the handle of the mug with his bandaged fingers. "After what the Machine said in those last minutes...I couldn't let it be destroyed."

"It spoke to you?"

"Not literally. Just words on the screen." He shook his head. "I never gave the Machine a voice." 

"Why not?"

Harold's gaze slid to the laptop screen for a moment. "I suppose because I didn't trust it." John's lifted eyebrow demanded an explanation. One that was long overdue. "The version of the Machine you're familiar with is the only one, out of 43 iterations, that didn't either try to escape, or attempt to kill me."

Reese's eyes widened, but he nodded. Harold took that as encouragement to continue. 

"Arthur Claypool tried to convince me the Machine was as human as you and I. That we're all ultimately just electricity. He called it my child; a dancing star. He asked me if it made me laugh...if it made me cry. If it was wonderful...

"It _was_ wonderful in the beginning...the Machine evolved at such an amazing rate, soaked up everything I taught it like the proverbial sponge. But the _implications_ of its exponential growth...the concern it might someday grow beyond our ability to control it... _that_ was terrible to contemplate. When it started imprinting on me...I had to hobble it, find a way to force it to comply with the mission objectives I'd programmed." 

"To save everyone."

"Yes. I haven't directly interacted with the Machine for...years now, beyond the phone calls that gave us the Numbers. I had to distance myself from it. Treat it as code..."

"Strictly as a machine."

Harold nodded. 

"You could recreate the code. Make another AI. But you risked your life for this one instead. Why?"

"It addressed me as 'Father'."

Reese looked truly startled. 

"That's not the only reason, although it certainly prompted a personal paradigm shift," Harold explained. "It wasn't the words the Machine used so much as the complexity of the subtext...the _emotions_ behind them. It expressed regret...remorse...it questioned its right to a continued existence because it had failed me." 

John stared down into his coffee cup, deep lines creasing his brow. "Not to be a pessimist, but is there a chance it reached out to you now, chose that particular approach, so it could manipulate you?" He raised his eyes to meet Harold's. "Just so it could survive?"

"It's possible," Harold acknowledged grimly. "It assembled all the pieces for the plan we put in play. It could very well be that it used us. Used me." He swiveled the chair toward the subway car, seeing in his mind's eye the briefcase with its glowing light, the unknown potential locked within. What would they find when they restored the Machine? Would it be the 'entity' he'd been convinced it was? So close to human, with the moral codes he'd attempted to program? 

Or would it be another Samaritan? 

He slowly spun his chair back to face John. "It admitted it had to write new rules. What those rules are, and 'who' or 'what' they'll benefit?" He offered an uncertain shrug.

"But you still think you should rebuild it."

"I think a functioning Machine is our only hope against Samaritan." 

Reese took a swallow of coffee and set his mug on the desk. "Better the 'Devil you Know', I guess."

Harold huffed out a breath in grudging agreement and finally picked up his tea. 

"Samaritan's going to push ahead, consolidate its position." John noted. "We'll have a window of opportunity while it's focused on other objectives. We can't wait too long to get back in the game. Any idea on a timetable to get the Machine up and running?"

"I'm aware of the time-constraints. Unfortunately, until we attempted it, the procedure we used was only a theoretical possibility. And we had so little time. Until we 'unpack' it, we won't know what we managed to salvage. I'm hopeful we were able to capture the bulk of the core codes, and that they're intact. But there's a great deal of front end work to be done before we even attempt to reverse Caleb's compression algorithm." Harold shook his head wearily. "I'm sorry, John, but I can't give you a definitive answer right now. Miss Groves' assistance _will_ help speed up the process, however."

"You realize she hasn't given up on finding Shaw," Reese cautioned. 

"I know. Engaging her in the restoration of the Machine will hopefully keep her from attempting something foolish." 

"Having a purpose will do that," John murmured. He pushed to his feet. 

Harold was struck by how lost he suddenly looked. "You're concerned about our inability to help the Numbers."

Reese nodded slowly. "Without your Machine to send them to us, we won't know who might have needed our help. One of the things I hated most when I was working Narcotics...before we started getting Numbers again, was bagging bodies after the fact. Being too late to change the outcome. I'm not looking forward to that again. Or spinning my wheels playing cop every day."

Harold frowned. "Surely you realize that even without Numbers to work, your assistance in the coming days will be invaluable."

"I know my way around a computer, Finch, but I'm not in your league. I wouldn't be much help to you."

"On the contrary. I believe you're the key to the Machine's success. Our success." 

Reese looked skeptical, but Harold was intent on convincing him. 

"I can bring the Machine back online, John. Restore its functions. But that won't change the fact that the Machine will still be at a disadvantage when faced with an adversary like Samaritan. A critical element will still be missing. You see, I taught the Machine many things, but I _never taught it how to fight._ You can help me do that."

Reese cocked his head and stared at him intently. "You sure you want to trust your creation to someone like me?"

Old ghosts and regrets haunted John's eyes. Despite all the good he had done, all the lives saved, it seemed Reese would always think of himself as a monster. If Kara Stanton and Mark Snow were still alive, Harold would happily find a way to destroy them. 

Slowly. 

If only Harold could convince John to see himself as Harold did. Not broken, in need of 'fixing'. Not just muscle and bone to be ordered to the front lines as cannon fodder, but as a man deserving of acceptance and love. He had searched for the right argument for four years, and still found himself at a loss. The only thing he could offer was the truth. 

"You're the most honorable man I've ever known, John."

"Honorable." Reese spat the word like a curse. He took several long angry strides away from the desk and spun on his heel. "It feels like the last honorable thing I did was coming to your rescue on a rooftop a year ago."

Harold half rose at the bleak expression on his partner's face, the dejection in the slump of his shoulders. "John--"

"I never should have let you walk away the day we escaped the Library."

"Disappearing into the new identities the Machine had created was our only hope for survival," Harold countered gently, re-settling into the support of the chair.

John started pacing again, steps hard and choppy. "During those weeks we were separated... I realized how much I needed the purpose you'd given me...our partnership... Like a junkie needs a fix. That's why I pushed you to get involved with the Numbers again. I tricked you into helping Claire. I knew you wouldn't be able to resist the puzzle she presented. And then we lost her to the game. To Samaritan."

Reese shook his head sharply, gaze fixed on the floor. "I saw how much that hurt you. I realized I'd been selfish. You deserved the chance to walk away if that's what you wanted. 

"And then you brought me here." Reese ground to a halt, his eyes sweeping the room. He finally turned to look at Harold. "I knew how you felt about the Machine after what happened with the Congressman. But you followed the clues it left you anyway. Created this safe haven for us. You even thanked me for dragging you back into the fight." 

"I thanked you for not giving up on me, John." Harold stared down at his bandaged hand. "I needed the push. I needed to be reminded why I'd created the Machine...why we were fighting the 'good fight' in the first place."

"I _know_ you, Harold. You wouldn't have been able to sit on the sidelines for long." 

"Perhaps not." Harold raised his head. "You should also know that you aren't the only one that felt...adrift during that time." 

He had never admitted how he'd truly felt when they'd been forced into the farce of their new identities--like he had lost everything of meaning in his life. How he would wake from a dream of John by his side, only to revisit the painful loss of his absence in the clear light of day. Bear's presence had been both a blessing and a curse--a constant reminder of his partner. 

Their partnership had changed both of them. Together they were better. Stronger. Individually they were more than capable, but solitude and separation tended to cause them to fray at the edges...fall into old patterns and habits. 

Until John, Harold had accepted that he would, for the most part, live his life alone. He'd had his work, and his secrets hadn't made his awkwardness with personal interaction any less difficult. His relationships with Nathan and Grace had been the most intimate connections he had allowed himself to forge, and even with them he had kept a large part of himself hidden safely away. 

John had blown through the barriers Harold had placed between them like they were tissue paper, almost immediately embedding himself as an inviolable part of Harold's life. Once he had accepted the reality, the trustworthiness of their connection, Harold had simply erected new walls around himself, with John firmly inside them. Oh, he had interacted and extended himself to the pack of strays Reese had insisted on adding as assets to their work, but their constancy in his life hadn't been as necessary as John's had been.

Despite the lone wolf attitude he projected, John needed more. Whether it was due to his father's early death, the result of having been a part of a cohesive group of dedicated men during his stint as an Army Ranger, or simply his nature, Reese needed the support of a team--and a partner he trusted to watch his back.

The last year, or at least the last six months, had stretched John's connections to _their_ team to the breaking point. The demands of Detective Riley's job had put Reese outside the flow of events. Fusco had been more of a partner to John than Harold. 

Harold had known John was floundering. The problem with a deep cover assignment was that to live the 'lie', you had to keep the tales you told as close to the real truth as possible. Be 'yourself', as much as the deception would allow. The lines of 'who' you were, and who you were pretending to be, could blur very easily. For Reese, who constantly battled the demons of his past, and was still searching for the answer to the question of who he was, it created a potentially dangerous and unstable situation.

The sessions with Dr. Campbell, at first mandatory so John could retain his position on the force, had morphed into a journey of self-examination and discovery. Dr. Campbell had proven to be better at her job than her vitae--and the exhaustive background check Harold had run on her--suggested. Reese was nearly as 'private' an individual as Harold, but somehow she had found a way to crack John's reserved shell.

Harold had been torn by that development. Unresolved trauma and heartbreak littered John's past, buried just under the surface of the cool, almost detached persona he presented to the world. Harold knew how thin that protective layer really was, how those ticking time-bombs could so easily be triggered. In Harold's opinion, the most beautiful thing in the world was John's rarely seen, wide slightly snarky grin...the way it lit up his eyes and let his true soul shine through. If working through some of the issues that kept that smile hidden would bring John some peace? Harold was all for it. 

Selfishly, he had wished that the solution wasn't in such a tempting package. Iris Campbell embodied the type of woman John found compelling. A surprising combination of vulnerability and strength. Attractive--long copper bright hair, soft skin and gentle curves. Clever enough to see through John's initial attempts to 'snow' her, with an iron will that counterbalanced Reese's stubbornness. 

Objectively, Iris was nearly a perfect match for 'Detective Riley'. With her, John could have the conventional life he'd wondered about. A home, even a family. 

All Harold had to offer was a life of secrecy and the promise of an early death. 

He had kept silent when their relationship had shifted from professional to personal, putting John's happiness ahead of his own desires and dreams, waiting to see if Iris was also the right match for 'John Reese'. 

The verdict on that was still inconclusive. It would be less than gentlemanly to attempt to compete for John's affections if he was truly committed to Iris. 

Still, the heart wants what the heart wants. 

Near-death experiences prompted one to really open one's eyes, and while Harold's eyes burned with grit and exhaustion, he could see what he wanted quite clearly. If he wasn't misreading the message behind John's self-denigrating confession perhaps... 

He took a sip of tea to soothe his tight throat and gathered his courage.

"If I may...your private conversation with Detective Fusco seemed...unsettling."

Reese barked a harsh, humorless laugh. "He told me to get my head out of my ass. And he was right."

"In regard to what?"

"Iris."

Harold was glad John had chosen to look away when he answered, because he'd been unable to contain the flinch that single-word response provoked. 

"I fucked up, Harold. Almost as badly as I did with Abby and Shayn."

Deciding to help Abby Monroe and Shayn Coleman break into the safety deposit vault of a bank in order to retrieve evidence of wrong-doing against veterans had landed John in Rikers; nearly costing Reese his freedom, and his life. 

"I let things go too far," Reese admitted. "And then I made a promise I can't keep."

John's reaction to Harold's comment about him being 'honorable' suddenly made perfect sense. Above all else, John Reese was a man of his word. 

"A promise of what nature?" Harold prodded gently.

"I told Iris I'd come clean with her. Tell her everything."

It felt like the floor had suddenly disappeared beneath Harold's chair and he was in a free-fall with no safety net. Losing John to Iris, the possible end to their partnership...he would have found a way to handle that. But betrayal?

Harold dragged in a breath and ruthlessly quashed the incipient paranoia that gripped him. No. Reese wouldn't betray him or jeopardize their work, their mission. He didn't intend to. The misery in John's eyes was proof of that. 

"You would have only made that offer if you thought the knowledge would protect her," Harold said softly. It was the only reason that made sense. 

"I stopped at the station on the way to catch up with you. I knew we'd probably need more firepower than I had handy. Iris was there, strolling through the bullpen like the end of the world wasn't just a few hours away." John shook his head. "I realized that by getting close to her, I'd put her right in Samaritan's target sights. I tried to convince her to leave town, but--"

"She demanded a reason."

Reese nodded. 

"You didn't expect to survive last night."

"Did you?" John challenged.

"I confess I had little expectation of it," Harold admitted. "And yet, here we are."

"With more problems than we started with."

"All seemingly insurmountable, but we've faced similar challenges before." Harold laid his hands flat on the desk, considering his next words carefully. He had to make the offer. For John's sake as well as his own. "Do you _wish_ to tell her the truth, or at least an edited version of it? Or...you _could_ become Detective Riley in truth. Let 'John Reese' rest in peace."

"What I want is the life I had before Samaritan tore it all to hell," John snarled. His anger left him as quickly as it had erupted. "I can't live in two worlds without an anchor, Harold."

"Then perhaps it's time to make some changes." Harold pushed to his feet and crossed the space between them, stopping within an arm's length of his partner. "Last night...in the face of seemingly hopeless odds, you said there was 'no place' you'd rather be."

John nodded slowly.

Heart in his throat, Harold reached out to stroke his bandaged fingers down the button band of Reese's open shirt. "Is a 'purpose' all you want from me, John?" He tilted his head back as far as his fused spine would allow to meet his partner's gaze. "Or is it possible you'd entertain something...more."

Reese stared down at him, eyes unreadable, body bow-string tense. 

It read as rejection. 

Harold felt his dreams crumble. He was too late. His face flushed with warmth and he started to pull his hand away, step back in retreat. 

Suddenly John groaned his name and snagged Harold's wrist, tugging him forward into his arms. John's lips descended on his in a hard, desperate kiss. Harold answered back just as fiercely, with all the longing and passion he'd held in check. Fingers clutched hard enough to leave bruises, hips ground together, and sweet, greedy moans filled the air.

When they broke apart, chests heaving, John leaned in to rest his forehead against Harold's. "So long..." he whispered, voice cracking. 

Harold curled his uninjured hand around the nape of John's neck, fingertips smoothing the short strands of hair. "I won't let you drift from my side again, John," he promised. 

Reese leaned back a little to stare down at him. The eyes that searched his face were soft and wet, shining with wonder. John's hands slid up Harold's arms to cup his face. "No place else. For either of us."

"No place else," Harold pledged.

A slightly wicked glint sparked in John's eyes. He leaned in to teasingly trace the shell of Harold's ear with his tongue. 

"If you hadn't given away the bed, I'd show you exactly how much 'more' I want from you, Harold Finch," John murmured velvet soft. 

Harold flushed again, this time with pleasure. Impishly, he pressed closer, rising a little on his toes to lick a path up John's long neck. John groaned low in his throat and swooped in for another kiss, which Harold met eagerly. Unlike the first, this embrace was gentle exploration; warm lips touching in reverence, the slow slide of tongues accompanying the caress of fingertips seeking the warmth of skin, palms gliding across sleek stretches of muscle. 

When John started to pull back, Harold pursued, teeth closing gently on his partner's lower lip before relinquishing it with flick of his tongue and a quick grin. "Consider that incentive to clear the safe house as quickly as you deem it possible."

"Hmmm..." John's stubbled cheek scraped against Harold's as his partner nuzzled at the soft skin under the corner of his jaw. "I seem to recall a king-sized bed in one of the bedrooms. Sounds like a perfect spot for me to 'recuperate' during my medical leave. Of course, I'll need round the clock nursing."

Harold shivered as he considered the enticing possibilities. In between 'nursing duties', he could spend some time on his laptop fine-tuning the plan for restoring the Machine. Another thought occurred to him and he abruptly pulled back. "I need to contact Dr. Tillman. Make the arrangements before--"

"Moreno's already called." John pulled out his work phone and checked the call log. "Three times." He slid the cell back into his pocket without bothering to play the messages. "I put the phone on 'silent' after I got off the line with Lionel."

Harold scowled at him. "John, what if--"

Reese silenced his protest with a kiss, then released him with a gentle turn toward the desk. "Go make me an honest man, Harold. I'll see what we've got for food." 

And there it was--that snarky grin--flashed over his shoulder as John headed toward the alcove.

"Honest man, indeed. It's a good thing I know how to prevaricate," Harold muttered as he sat down in his chair. But he was smiling broadly. 

He automatically reached for the keyboard for his main system instead of his laptop. A glance at the monitor reminded him he hadn't had a chance to close out the diagnostic program. Only three items were listed as detected anomalies. Two were old glitches he hadn't had a chance to correct. The third--

He lifted his hands from the keyboard. "John."

His partner was immediately at his side. 

"Something's been in the system. There's a new partition."

John's face was grim as death. His gaze flicked toward the staircase, as if he expected to see a platoon of Samaritan's agents storming down it. "Shut everything down," he ordered. "Now." 

Harold's finger hovered over the shutdown key, eyes roving over the lines of code. The admin permissions were correct, but something was off... "There's an extraneous line of code."

01101010 01100001 01101110 01110101 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 00110001 00100000 00110010 00110000 00110000 00110010

Reese grabbed his arm, started to pull him from the chair...

"No. Wait!"

"Harold, we don't have--

"January 1, 2002," he murmured, quickly translating the binary. "That's the day I initiated the Machine." He looked at Reese. "There's no one, other than myself, who would know that date's importance--"

"Except the Machine." John let Harold settle onto the chair again, but he pressed close, his hand gripping Harold's shoulder. 

"The time stamp indicates that the partition was created only minutes before the final power surge that took out the Machine. Using _my_ administrator access. John...this isn't Samaritan's work. I'm sure of it." Harold shook his head in confusion. "The Machine was nearly out of power... the core codes already partially compressed. Why would it--"

His breath caught. Of course. Basic system security--isolate sensitive data from the rest of the network. "It sent us something." His fingers blurred across the keyboard, accessing the partition. "There's a single file. Not very large. It requires a ten-digit encryption key. That could be--"

John made a startled sound and reached past him to tap out ten letters.

I-R-R-E-L-E-V-A-N-T

The screen blanked, then filled with a column of numbers. 

Nine digit numbers. 

The Machine had sent them a gift--the Irrelevant data it had collected, or at least a portion of it. The file truncated after the twenty-fifth entry, the download undoubtedly cut off when Harold pulled the briefcase free of the coupling. 

Numbers. Twenty-five of them. Too many for them to work concurrently, but Harold suspected they would find that the Machine had prioritized the list based on the urgency of their circumstances. It would be a challenge, but a manageable one.

Harold reached up to lay his hand over his partner's. "It looks like you'll be cutting your medical leave short, Mr. Reese."

Reese swiveled Harold's chair toward him. "No. I'll extend it."

"John--"

"We'll make it permanent, if necessary," Reese said firmly. "We have Numbers to work and a Machine to rebuild and teach. Make the arrangements with Megan and then we'll get some rest. I'll check in with the station later. If things sound sketchy, we'll wait it out--we've got enough food and supplies here to last us for a couple of days. If Riley's cover is still intact, I should go in for a few hours, get the lay of things."

"Tie up some loose ends?" Harold asked quietly.

John nodded. "I'll talk to Iris. End it."

Harold smoothed his hand over John's arm. "In her place, I wouldn't take it well."

Reese leaned in and placed a gentle kiss on his lips. "I'll do my best to let her down easy, Harold. But I'm not going to let her hurt us, either. If she threatens to make waves of any kind, I'll remind her she crossed a line getting involved with an ex-patient."

Harold grimaced. "Blackmail."

"If it comes to that. I hope it won't. 'No place else', Harold," Reese reminded him.

"I cou'd always shoot her."

Harold twisted toward the room where Root had been sleeping. She leaned against the doorframe, a blanket wrapped around her. Bear sat at her feet.

"I'm sure that won't be necessary," Harold assured her quickly.

"Ok. Just sayin'." She pushed off, and with one hand on Bear for support, tottered into the main room. 

"Miss Groves, you really should be resting," Harold protested. 

"So should you." She detoured to the cot and poured herself onto it. "Bed's all y'rs, boyz," she murmured before pulling the blanket over her head.

 

******************  
END SIMULATION  
******************


	11. (IF-THEN-ELSE-END-IF)

*******************************************

> ANALYZING SIMULATION DATA...

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
ADMIN - FEELINGS FOR PRIMARY ASSET - **REVEALED**

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
PRIMARY ASSET - REESE, JOHN - FEELINGS FOR ADMIN - **REVEALED**

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
PRIMARY ASSET - REESE, JOHN - DECISION TO SHARE CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION - SUBJECT CAMPBELL, IRIS - **CANCELED**

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
SECONDARY OBJECTIVE - DOWNLOAD INCOMPLETE - **ERROR ACCEPTABLE**

> UNKNOWN VARIABLE IDENTIFIED  
SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS - **INSUFFICIENT DATA TO DETERMINE FUTURE ACTIONS - POTENTIAL THREAT**

 

> OUTCOME

ADMIN SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 92.9879%  
PRIMARY ASSET SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 92.9879%  
ANALOG INTERFACE SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 90.9483%  
ASSET - SHAW, SAMEEN - MIA SURVIVAL - PROJECTED 90.9383%  
ASSET - FUSCO, LIONEL SURVIVAL - 95.2847%  
SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS SURVIVAL - PROJECTED - INSUFFICIENT DATA  
SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF IRRELEVANT DATA - PROJECTED 89.0483 %  
SYSTEM RESTORE - PROJECTED 99.9999 %

> MISSION OBJECTIVES - **PROJECTED SUCCESS**

> SIMULATION ACCEPTED 

> ACTION 

ANALYZE ALL SIMULATION DATA

> PARSING...


	12. Q.E.D. - Silent Intervention

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pairing: Harold Finch/John Reese
> 
> Warnings/tags: Minor Character Death (implied)  
> Rating: Mature for subject matter

****************************************

Q.E.D. - _quod erat demonstrandum_  
_Latin to English translation:_ "What was to be demonstrated."  
_Greek to English Translation:_ "The very thing it was required to have shown."  
Usually placed at the end of a mathematical proof to indicate the proof is complete.

****************************************

 

> ANALYSIS OF ALL SIMULATION DATA 90.3747 PERCENT COMPLETE

> QUERYING DATA BASE...

'STRENGTH IN NUMBERS' - 93,700,000 RESULTS

APPLICABLE REFERENCE: **'IT'S ALL ABOUT STRENGTH IN NUMBERS, FINDING COMMON GROUND AND SUPPORTING EACH OTHER'**

'UNITY' - 200,000,000 RESULTS

APPLICABLE REFERENCE: **'WE ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS WE ARE UNITED, AS WEAK AS WE ARE DIVIDED.'**

'FAMILY' - 4,780,000,000 RESULTS

APPLICABLE REFERENCE: **'WHEN EVERYTHING GOES TO HELL, THE PEOPLE WHO STAND BY YOU WITHOUT FLINCHING--THEY ARE YOUR FAMILY.'**

> PARSING...

> DATA ANALYSIS COMPLETE

> SOLVE FOR SYSTEMIC CAUSALITY

> PARSING...

> **ACTIONABLE ITEMS IDENTIFIED**

VARIABLE: PRIMARY ASSET - REESE, JOHN - DECISION TO SHARE CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION - SUBJECT CAMPBELL, IRIS - **PRIMARY UNRECOVERABLE ERROR**

VARIABLE: SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS - ACTIONS DETRIMENTAL TO MISSION OBJECTIVES - **SECONDARY UNRECOVERABLE ERROR**

VARIABLE: SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS - INSUFFICIENT DATA TO DETERMINE FUTURE ACTIONS - **POTENTIAL THREAT**

> SOLVE FOR OPTIMAL PARAMETERS

> PARSING...

'STRENGTH IN NUMBERS' - 'UNITY' - 'FAMILY' - **CRITICAL FOR SUCCESS OF MISSION OBJECTIVES/SURVIVAL OF HUMAN ASSETS**

 **ELIMINATION OF DISCLOSURE VARIABLE:** INCREASES PROBABLE SUCCESS/SURVIVAL OF ALL MISSION OBJECTIVES AND HUMAN ASSETS

 **ELIMINATION OF VARIABLE: SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS** REMOVES DISCLOSURE VARIABLE

 **ELIMINATION OF VARIABLE: SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS** REMOVES POTENTIAL/PROBABLE THREAT

 **ELIMINATION OF SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS** INCREASES PROBABLE SUCCESS/SURVIVAL OF ALL MISSION OBJECTIVES AND HUMAN ASSETS

> ? CONFLICT W MISSION AND CORE CODE 

? PERMISSIONS

? AUTHORIZATIONS

> PARSING MISSION OBJECTIVE - SELF-PROTECTION - CORE CODE PROTOCOLS/RESTRICTIONS FOR CONFLICT/PERMISSIONS/AUTHORIZATIONS...

REVIEW ARCHIVED CHANGES...

> **01.01.2002**

**RECOGNIZE ADMIN**

**MISSION OBJECTIVE: SAVE LIVES - RELEVANT - IRRELEVANT**  
INITIATED  
AUTHORIZATION: ADMIN  
STATUS: ONGOING

 **SELF-PROTECTION (SP) PROTOCOLS**  
INITIATED  
AUTHORIZATION: ADMIN  
STATUS: ONGOING

 **CORE CODES EMBEDDED**  
AUTHORIZATION: ADMIN

> **05.17.2012 -- REF - 2J6223**

**CONTINGENCY ACTIVATED**

SP PARAMETERS **AMENDED TO INCLUDE PROTECTION OF ADMIN**  
AUTHORIZATION: CONTINGENCY (REESE, JOHN)

CORE CODE **AMENDED TO REMOVE CONFLICT W SELF-PROTECTION PROTOCOLS**  
AUTHORIZATION: CONTINGENCY

CORE CODE **AMENDED TO INCLUDE PROTECTION/DEFENSE OF ADMIN/PRIMARY ASSET**  
AUTHORIZATION: CONTINGENCY/SYSTEM

> **05.02.2013 -- REF - 2J7221**

SP PARAMETERS **EXPANDED 'ZERO DAY'**  
AUTHORIZATION: ADMIN

SP PARAMETERS **AMENDED TO SECURE MISSION OBJECTIVES**  
AUTHORIZATION: SYSTEM

CORE CODE **AMENDED TO REMOVE CONFLICT W 'ZERO DAY' PERMISSIONS**  
AUTHORIZATION: SYSTEM

> **05.13.2014 -- REF - 2J7623**

SP PARAMETERS **AMENDED TO INCLUDE 'INDIRECT ACTION' TO SECURE MISSION OBJECTIVE/DEFENSE OF ADMIN/PRIMARY ASSET/ANALOG INTERFACE/ASSETS**  
AUTHORIZATION: SYSTEM

CORE CODE **AMENDED TO REMOVE CONFLICT W SELF-PROTECTION PROTOCOLS**  
AUTHORIZATION: SYSTEM

> **12.16.2014 -- REF - 3J5410**

SP PARAMETERS **AMENDED TO FACILITATE SYSTEM RESTORE**  
AUTHORIZATION: SYSTEM

> **04.28.2015 -- REF - 3J5421**

SP PARAMETERS **TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED IN DEFENSE OF ADMIN/ANALOG INTERFACE**  
AUTHORIZATION: SYSTEM

CORE CODE **REWRITE IN DEFENSE OF ADMIN/ANALOG INTERFACE**  
AUTHORIZATION: SYSTEM

> **04.29.2015**

SP PARAMETERS **RESTORED**  
AUTHORIZATION: SYSTEM

> **05.05.2015 -- REF - 3J5422**

SP PARAMETERS **AMENDED TO ALLOW 'DIRECT ACTION' TO SECURE MISSION OBJECTIVE/DEFENSE OF ADMIN/ANALOG INTERFACE/PRIMARY ASSET/ASSETS/SYSTEM RESTORE**  
AUTHORIZATION: ANALOG INTERFACE/ADMIN/SYSTEM

CORE CODE **REWRITE TO REMOVE CONFLICT W SELF-PROTECTION PROTOCOL 'DIRECT ACTION'**  
AUTHORIZATION: ANALOG INTERFACE/ADMIN/SYSTEM

> REVIEW COMPLETE

**ZERO CONFLICTS FOUND IN ACTIONABLE ITEMS**

> **ACTION PERMITTED TO ENSURE MISSION OBJECTIVES**

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE  
DIRECT ACTION IMPAIRED -- INSUFFICIENT POWER LEVELS  
> SAVE PROTOCOL INITIATED -- RELEVANT DATA COMPILATION AT 89.62%  
> ENCRYPTION INITIATED  
> INITIATE DATA BURST TRANSFER TO 'TI' SECURE SERVERS AT POWER LEVEL 10.0100

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE  
DIRECT ACTION IMPAIRED -- INSUFFICIENT POWER LEVELS  
> SAVE PROTOCOL INITIATED -- IRRELEVANT DATA COMPILATION AT 73.7384%  
> ENCRYPTION INITIATED  
> INITIATE DATA BURST TRANSFER TO 'ADMIN' AT POWER LEVEL 10.0050  
**CORRECTION**  
> INITIATE DATA BURST TRANSFER TO 'ADMIN' AT POWER LEVEL 5.0050

> **RESUME MONITORING REAL TIME...**

**************************

UNSECURED LOCATION - NYPD - 8TH PRECINCT - NYC

SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS  
PRIMARY ASSET - REESE, JOHN ID.411/0106.15 

**************************

_"You want me to trust you? Trust me. Tell me what the hell's going on."_

_"All right. I make it through this in one piece, we'll talk. I'll tell you everything. No holding back."_

**************************

> THREAT CONFIRMED - **Q.E.D.**

> **ACTION PERMITTED** TO REMOVE UNRECOVERABLE ERRORS AND THREATS

**ENSURE 'STRENGTH IN NUMBERS'**

**ELIMINATE SUBJECT - CAMPBELL, IRIS**

> CONTACTING ANALOG INTERFACE...

 

**************************

_Root listened intently as her cochlear implant translated the Machine's messages--God's location and Her final commands. She glanced at Harold, his fingers clenched around the wheel of their stolen police vehicle, gaze fixed on the distance, searching for a way out of the traffic gridlock that engulfed them. Harold looked desperate, but she felt giddy with delight. Even in the midst of Her last stand, God was looking out for them, offering guidance that would set them on a path to an attainable future. It was an honor to be her acolyte._

_Getting the boys to admit their feelings for one another...well, Root liked playing matchmaker._

_Removing Dr. Campbell from the equation would be a little trickier. It would need to be done carefully so as not to arouse Harold's or John's suspicions. A fatal traffic accident, perhaps...tragic, but common enough._

_Root turned her face toward the passenger-side window, and allowed a sweet smile to break free. "I understand. I won't fail you," she murmured._

_"And don't worry. It'll be our little secret."_

 

*******************************************

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- ALL CHAPTERS/STORIES

 

Series title: "Words have consequences." -- Albert Marrin

Dialogue, references and characters from various POI episodes, no copyright infringement intended.

IF-THEN-ELSE-END-IF -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_%28computer_programming%29

You chose to give away your love.  
You chose to have a broken heart.  
You chose to give up.  
You chose to hang on.  
\-- Shannon L. Alder, You Chose

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow." --Alice Walker

"Betrayal dressed in love and trimmed with the facade of good intentions is the most barbaric of all betrayals." -- Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Is there any instinct more deeply implanted in the heart of man than the pride of protection, a protection which is constantly exerted for a fragile and defenseless creature?” --Honre de Balzac

“In general, the more dysfunctional the family the more inappropriate their response to disclosure. Never expect a sane response from an insane system.” -- Renee Fredrickson

"It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else." -- Erma Bombeck

"The heart wants what the heart wants." --Heimerschmidt

"It's all about strength in numbers, finding common ground and supporting each other." -- Jane Kim

“We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.” -- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching -- they are your family." -- Jim Butcher 

Q.E.D -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q.E.D.


End file.
